JHK’s Three-Act Play, Big Slide
A log mansion in the Adirondack Mountains…
A big family on the run…
A nation in peril…
Visit the Big Slide Page to order, perform, or see sample scenes.

Ho ho ho! It’s that time of year again. Here’s JHK’s holiday classic: A Christmas Orphan.

11-year-old Jeff Greenaway hears his mom and dad argue one night after an office Christmas party. He infers from their garbled squabble that he is an orphan, found in a willow basket on the welcome mat outside their New York apartment. Thinking now that his parents are imposters, he steals away to Grand Central Station and buys a train ticket to Drakesville, Vermont, where he intends to start life all over again.Print | Kindle | Kobo (Digital) | Barnes & Noble (Digital)

An Olympian game of musical chairs in global finance heads for a climax in the days ahead as so many eyes are diverted to alternate festivities in British Columbia, where grown men compete for gold by riding things that look like cafeteria trays down icy mountainsides — is this the moment that comes every four years when you wonder why you didn’t get your kid a luge for Christmas?

The advertisers must be lovin’ it, but six thousand miles away a whole lot of European bankers are wondering how to get their fannies in a dwindling number of seats at the money trough. Greece is going bust. History is great prankster this way. Just when you’re wondering how America will make Afghanistan safe for democracy, or whether Venezuela will blow itself up along with the oil markets, along comes kindly, picturesque, inoffensive old Uncle Greece — land of antiquities and pizza entrepreneurs — to fuck things up.

Those who run Europe have three choices: to bail out Greece, to let Greece sink (into a desperate economic depression), or to pretend to bail out Greece. The sad truth of the situation is that there is not enough productive activity in Europe to really support all the members of the European Union in the style they’re accustomed to. (Which also happens to be true of the USA and its constituent states, but you probably know that already.)

Europe is a sad case, really poignant, because it became such a darn nice corner of the world after the convulsions of the mid 20th century. Who, for instance, can spend two weeks walking the lovely ancient streets of Bruges or Orvieto, or Lisbon and not fall to their knees in overwhelming despair on return to the slum of Kennedy Airport? Europe rebuilt itself so beautifully after the war while America became a utopia of overfed clowns riding in clown cars around the plasticized cartoon outskirts of our ruined cities. Europe had wonderful public transit while America let its railroads rot away. European men went about their business in grown-up clothing while Americans men dressed like five-year-olds and got flames tattooed on their necks as though contemplating a barbarian invasion of Akron, Ohio.

But history, that prankster, in the awful melodrama of industrial capital’s demise, now seems to have backed lovely, reformed Europe into a corner as an early object-lesson in the agonies of de-complexifying and re-localization. The monetary union seemed like a great idea as long as the members appeared to play straight in the revolving credit racket. Europe had never been so peaceful and happy for so long. But the financial crisis has opened a yawning black hole in the operating system, and into it has been sucked all the elaborately constructed abstract markers of wealth — in the form of credit-gone-bad — and now the sad truth is that there really isn’t enough wealth to go around. Places like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland have to return to their previous condition as narcoleptic economic backwaters. Either that or Germans and Frenchmen have to work an extra seventeen hours a week to prop these places up, and somehow that seems unlikely to happen.

Europe has plenty of other things to worry about in the bigger picture. For one, where are they supposing to get the oil and natural gas they need to keep things running? Who’s got any? Well, The UK once had quite bit but they pissed it away building freeways and suburbs. Norway, with around one-twelfth the UK’s population, still has a bit of oil and gas left, but not enough to keep the rest of the gang in Europe humming. Romania has, like, a tablespoon of oil left, maybe. For the moment, Europe is getting its fossil fuels from Russia and the usual suspects in the oil export world. Bottom line: Europe can become Russia’s energy bitch (and only for a little while because Russia is getting tapped out too), or it can compete with China, Japan, India, and the USA for whatever comes out of the Middle East, Africa, and Venezuela. Meanwhile, all the exporters see their own exports dwindling as their populations grow and grow and they pour more bunker oil into the new electric power stations, and evermore new cars leave the showrooms in Riyadh, and Hugo Chavez keeps pumping 35-cent gasoline for “el gente.”

My guess is that the current situation in Euroland is unfixable. The “contagion” of Greece has already spread and it’s only a matter of months before the Iberian peninsula goes under too. Did I leave out the UK’s financial troubles (acknowledging that they are not within the Euro currency system)? Not to put too fine a point on it, Old Blighty is pretty well nigh fucked. It’s on the express line back to the fifteenth century, and doesn’t know it yet. Break out the leathern helmets and the wooden ploughshares. The UK is out of oil, out of banking cred (which is all it had the last forty years), and out of time. The one thing they have a lot of is bad paper hiding in their bank vaults — enough to blow that black hole of capital even wider.

A larger question is what happens to the vaunted peacefulness of contemporary Europe now that the narcotic of universal prosperity is wearing off. Maybe it will be too shellshocked for a while to do anything. More likely, though, old and new animosities will burble out of those lovely old streets. Nations that seemed to be populated by effete cafe layabouts will be transformed back into warrior societies. Never under-estimate the sheer power of testosterone in idle, unemployed young men.

For another thing, I expect Europe to join the global contest for the world’s remaining oil resources. Germany and France, at least, won’t enjoy the luxury anymore of kicking back while the US Military desperately tries to keep a western “police” presence in the deserts down there. Germany and France will also not have the luxury to drink espresso and watch Iran become a mad dog nuclear power, with missiles capable of striking Frankfort and Lyon. Won’t that be interesting?

As all this plays out, of course, the USA will be struggling with very similar problems of capital and economy, and as our states fall into bankruptcy one can easily imagine all kinds of political mischief here that would parallel the unravelings of Europe. Our financial arrangements are intermingled anyway, so the collapse of a major bank, or of a country, over there is going to blow more holes through our foundering institutions as well. Things are changing fast. We’re all werewolves now.

About James Howard Kunstler

James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology and the Fate of the Nation. His novels include World Made By Hand, The Witch of Hebron, Maggie Darling — A Modern Romance, The Halloween Ball, an Embarrassment of Riches, and many others. He has published three novellas with Water Street Press: Manhattan Gothic, A Christmas Orphan, and The Flight of Mehetabel.

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Yes, Europe did a much better job with rail than the US (and Canada), but it is not too late to dramatically expand rail and reduce the use of cars and trucks. And hopefully make it easier to get away from suburbia. The government keeps talking about green jobs, well this is it.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/case-for-rail.html

Jim, have you been to Europe recently? All Eurotrash young people are tattooed, pierced, and mohawked! Worse than here. And they are on the way to being as obese. In fact, I believe I read last year that Greeks were now actually fatter than Americans. The whole Brussels govt. is a farce and countries should pull out of the Euro currency.

James, great post but let’s take a breather for a sec.
First of all, Greece has 10million people, this isn’t a huge country, and the problem though grave, will not kill the EU, it’s a wee bit healthier than you assume.
And, Germany already has it in its budget to bail them out. Germany is always bailing someone out and re those military posts, Germany pays for the everything and would be quite happy to see some of them gone.
And there’s something called the IMF, which you’re well aware of, an institution specifically set up to assist, as they did with Argentina, etc.
As I said before, the EU states are sovereign so they can’t print money, but they can assist and they will help bail them out, but Greece will not crush the entire EU. It’s a random world, but things are a bit more stable over here.
If you read my latest post from The Economist, even though Greece, Spain and Italy have large debt, the UK sits at the very bottom. So let’s review all the graphs and indicators, shall we, its a bit more complicated than just one country breaking a huge body of sovereign states.
Bailey/Geneva

Vintage,Vintage,Vintage.Anytime the ” F ” bomb in any form is used more than once in this Monday morning gift I know the juices were really flowing.Being of Greek ancestry I often wondered how the Greeks went from the cradle of civilization to diners with nothing in between.Now I know.Thanks Jim.

Speaking of the testosterone of unemployed young urban men, there’s an article in Harper’s this month that I expect has as accurate a view of our future as did an article there on the potential for mortgage-debt meltdown five years before it happened in 2008. It’s called ‘The Soft-kill Solution’ by Ando Arike. He presents the archaeology of ‘pain compliance’ technology – crowd control with ‘non-lethal weapons’, or ‘less-than-lethal weapons’ as police forces prefer to call them. He dissects the crackdown on peaceful protests that has been engineered since the anti-globalization protests in 1999. Particularly disturbing is the microwave gun that blasts protesters with a wall of heat.
I’m happy to be in a rural area, where one local pointed out that the first car that runs out of gas on the single minor highway up from the closest city will block the road to everyone else. We’re kind of hoping the contractions happen at a slower pace than that, allowing willing young homesteaders time to plan their move to our area, which has an excess of aging hippies and a dearth of youngsters. Maybe we’re dreaming. My personal strategy is to help them get off the industrial food chain as a first step in change.
Lynn10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill

Jim’s only overstatements are as follows:
1) I happen to live in a nice, slowly reviving city, only hampered by a clownish city government. It’s not all ruins in the US of A, me boy.
and
2) Jim needs to go back to look at younger European men’s clothing. Fashion crime has arrived, in the “I wear sports attire but don’t play” variety we see in America, too. The old dudes do know how to dress, I’ll grant that.
I’d say something about the tattoo on my arm, but to heck with that. At least it’s not flames.

Ah Jim, how wonderfully you write. But you shouldn’t worry so much. With enough money, all things are possible, and prosperity is just around the corner.
See how at http://www.thenothingstore.com
(Sorry about the broken link in the post above.)

Great post, Jim – but I have to pull you up on a couple of points of pedantry.
“The people” in the political sense is “El pueblo” – think a demonstration of 1970s Pablo Neruda trade unionists.
“La gente” has more borgeois connotations – it always brings to mind an image of a bunch of middle-class Spaniards at rush hour in their business suits and skirts, al briefcases and clasps and watches, stroking their moustaches and checking their compacts.
As for Iran, we can always do to them a hundred thousand times whatever they can do to us in their wettest of wet dreams. The UK has Trident and the Frenchies have their Frappe Du Force, and the Germans could join the party whenever they wanted, they’re just holding themselves back ’cause they still feel bad about World War 2. So don’t you worry about us on that score… Iran is and overrated and arrogant pup among nations and if they try anything we can literally bomb them into the Triassic.
They don’t need to drop any nukes on Europe or anywhere else for that matter, all they have to do is disrupt the oil supply.

Greece has a larger underground economy than most other european states so the place will keep going. Those who rely
upon government revenue for their jobs, like the public employees
will have to be cut one way or another. Hence the already started
street demonstrations of those folks. We have bigger problems
right here.

Back in the USA, there’s been quite a lot of action in the Wild Wild South. There’s been two “school shootings” within exactly a week of each other and within 10 miles of each other. A middle school student blowing another student away and a female professor blowing three colleagues away and wounding three others has made national news from Huntsville, Alabama.
Things are really starting to heat up – cracks in the fabric of society and in the minds of individuals are opening up – a sign of things to come?

Amen, thank God for the underworld (not). And while I’m at it, thank God for our well-made American deer rifles. When they start stealing out of your truck patch it is much more effective weapon than throwing stones! It is also much more deadly; on a per-case basis, than those assault rifles you antis are so worried about. As for the Olympics, at least Joe Biden, when interviewed, sounded like a intelligent and classy American. Much better than the nimrods in the recent past. CNBC cheerleaders will still ignore all of the European problems with that guy that looks like Elvis Costello leading the clown parade. Get those seeds started now!

Has anyone thought that every euro issued by the ECB is backed with some sort of investment in international financial markets? I think this brings far more risk to the euro value than the circus around PIGS farm (hey, at he bottom line, PIGS is still a small-scale farm!)…
But I know, the Chinese have to worry even more…!

“while Americans men dressed like five-year-olds and got flames tattooed on their necks as though contemplating a barbarian invasion of Akron, Ohio.”
American men invade something ha ha ha! They are so whacked out on prescription drugs they could not even evade the nearest convenience store gas station for their weekly cigarette intake.

Bailey sez:
“And there’s something called the IMF, which you’re well aware of, an institution specifically set up to assist, as they did with Argentina, etc.”
Sorry, but that is to guffaw! Assist? I believe “enslave” would be more accurate.
“As I said before, the EU states are sovereign so they can’t print money, but they can assist and they will help bail them out, but Greece will not crush the entire EU. It’s a random world, but things are a bit more stable over here.”
Really? Beware of wishful thinking when people begin to wonder where their next meal is coming from… Black swans, black swans, everywhere.
“If you read my latest post from The Economist, even though Greece, Spain and Italy have large debt, the UK sits at the very bottom. So let’s review all the graphs and indicators, shall we, its a bit more complicated than just one country breaking a huge body of sovereign states.”
Wishful thinking? Remember, a lot of those GDP numbers are based on worthless [or strictly fictional] crap. I really think Jim’s vision of the fatcats vying for a place at the trough applies here. After all, who supplies these “numbers”? Perhaps I’m just suffering from outrage fatigue, but I’m no less than convinced by proclamations from the rich. (I don’t think they have my “best interests” at heart. ;o) )

Yeah Goat1080 people are starting to become aware. They aren’t talking publicly about it yet.
A woman came into the store I work at and asked if I noticed that everyone is “being weird”. I said maybe a little grumpier than usual. She is into seeing people’s energy or aura and planetary movements affecting outcomes so have to be a little skeptical…
But I think people are starting to look around. Still in denial and not everyone, but this will come as more states go bankrupt and cut pay, jobs, reduce services and increase taxes.
All it would take to blow things sky high is interest rates moving up a point or two.

Well, if we all got poor together, is that really anything to get all upset about?
Why do we inhabit the distances we do? The husband wants to be close to work, and far from his mother-in-law. The wife wants to be close to her mother, but not too close to the office. It was ever so; the invention of cars simply made these distances greater. When we go back to walking, we will adopt shorter geographies, but preserve all the inconveniences we treasure. I’m looking forward to it.
And European vacations will again be exotic. Since the well-lived life must undergo an occasional adventure, now Europe will again suffice. All those lovely ruins, with the vines and flowers, and distant derelicts passing slowly by, how picturesque! Take a picture? But, we have no plastic left, remember. So, draw a picture. It’s an ordeal either way, but finally the day will darken, and we can go back to the hotel to drink and eat, sometimes even in peace.

“Never underestimate the sheer power of testosterone in idle, unemployed young men.”
Oh Amen, Brother James, amen. That is precisely what is fueling the rage in Islamo-World. That and the unending series of horrors we perpetrate at long-distance that ups the ante for revenge and retribution every day.
In the meantime, we spend our blood and treasure so the Afghan government can draft proposed changes to election law that would remove all three foreign members from the body that investigates fraud, limit the number of women in parliament and establish a host of new qualifications for candidates to run for office. Looks more like American democracy every day.
Soon our US-led Onward Christian Soldiers movement will gain even more converts (and recruits) as the economic conditions continue melt down here and our feisty young men either join up or get a court-ordered draft notice just to earn a few bucks and have three squares and a hot.
And here at home, we have the spectacle of the Hell-no-I-won’t-pay-anymore-taxes crowd raging at the Machine in Albany who are closing prisons right and left and demanding their state jobs be left intact. I for one am much happier to have the State close its prisons scattered in the hinterlands by design rather than throwing open the doors one day and dumping the prisoners and their family on my rural countryside.
Then there is the crowd in the county capital who are convinced a raise in the sales tax will result in all the money needed to close the budget gap, thus postponing the hard choices. Any housewife can tell you that the turnips have no more blood left and so spending will go down and the imaginary sale tax dollars will never show up in the coffers. But too late, since the budget black hole will all ready be larger.
Watch Illinois for the new state model about how to reign in spending. Stop paying all the social service providers and let Social Darwinism take its course. Those who can are picking up and heading out, perhaps in search of states (like NY) which still struggle to providing social service programs, although not for much longer. Terminal Capitalism is at hand with 41 US states currently facing budget deficits.

I’ll second the comment about euro “tattoo trash” in modern Europe.
Honestly though on the Iran thing, you’ve been drinking establishment koolaid or more likely AIPAC koolaid which I guess is the same.
Iranians have spent the last 31 years fouling their shorts with fear that we’ll never let them get away with their independence gambit…Dontcha imagine maybe they don’t actually aspire to conquer the world, but are just looking for the “magic potion” of immunity from conquest atomic weapons have represented since WW2?
But back to the main thrust of the essay…
All kinds of things are stealing away into the night on velvet feet as the “great unwinding” proceeds in a quiet way on Main St. while great words are spoken by leaders and pundits. Knowing what’s going on with many unemployed or underemployed friends and how they are changing their living arrangements, getting “loans” from family, and otherwise trying to get by with an attitude of resignation that this time things will not be better next year, makes me crazy when I contemplate the juxtaposition with the pageantry of the Superbowl or the Olympics. There is so much pretense going on and I do agree with Jim when he suggests we will elect “maniacs” who promise deliverance. Hitler happened in Germany, but we could have a second coming here….
The great big con which has enabled us to bask in the glow of empire the last several decades is so abstract I think none of its participants actually see its totality, and that abstraction results in widespread anger, but people only know they’re angry and each has his own view of who to blame. The Teabaggers blame all sorts of people and then turn right around and seek deliverance from some of the very same people who are complicit to the core in creating the mess…people are that confused and people who are confused are ripe for someone to provide them a facile explanation and a facile solution…

Another superb and all-too-true post. You’re quite right that we on this side of the pond have pissed away our geological resources almost as badly as you have. All I would add is that you needn’t worry about the Iranians nuking Frankfurt or Lyon (or any British city) – they’re on schedule to become Muslim-majority populations around about the time Iran becomes capable of hitting them. Perhaps the Labour government knew something we didn’t after all… see Peter Hitchens (a sort of English Kunstler) for more info – hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/02/commander-dizaei-has-had-his-day-so-have-40-years-of-argumen…

Those icy mountainsides that grown men and women are riding their cafeteria trays down at great risk to life and limb (not sure which health care system patches them up after they crash, probably the Canadian taxpayers are footing the bill for that as well as for the corporate extravaganza farce they call the Olympics) actually wouldn’t even be icy if huge amounts of snow hadn’t been brought in by truck and helicopter (believe it or not!) daily since November because coastal British Columbia is having record high temperatures this year and there wasn’t really enough ice for a winter Olympics.

I canceled my cable television service today and I bought a gardening magazine yesterday. I always wanted to go to Europe, especially Italy. It is important to live in the NOW I guess and get the things done you’ve always wanted to. In regards to clown cars, I’m buying a 1991 Honda CRX that gets 50mpg. I got halfway through my second read of The Long Emergency this weekend. Dad read The Hydrogen Age and said it seemed promising. I don’t understand the global significance of the luge ride either. How about those race cars in Daytona beach going in circles entertaining people…
When the shit hits the fan, will we still have the internet? How about cell phones? I’m up to four bicycles now too…
– Solar Guy Out

Bailey,
For another perspective on these fine entanglements, check out the latest post on “The Automatic Earth” regarding our good friends at Goldman Sachs, and their ever-so-ethical doings on the Continent.
(Thanks for your perspective, BTW.)

I agree that things are dire but some things are not as bad as I would have expected.
As to this comment:
A woman came into the store I work at and asked if I noticed that everyone is “being weird”.
I would have to say that to the contrary what has amazed me is that society has held together so well up to now.
I do find all the tatoos somewhat disturbing but that phenomenon originated during our faux prosperity, not during the recession of the last couple years.
In the US, look at the most dysfunctional places. Michigan, California, etc. I would expect the economic pain hitting people in those places would have led to a huge surge in crime and barbaric behavior. I don’t have the impression that has happened, at least up to now. I live in a county of Washington state that has something like 12% unemployment. I ride public transportation so I see a lot of the people that are worst off economically. I see them struggling with a lot of economic hardship but I don’t see them reverting to barbarism.
Not to say that disintegration of civilized society won’t happen as the economy gets worse, but I haven’t seen it so far.

Of course we will still have cellphones and the internet. How else will our fascist government keep watch and control the “dissidents” who don’t buy into make believe land where you give all your money to big government and big business in exchange for a food voucher, and be happy about it.

Euroland, the Horror Movie ?
I would advise every one to watch I.O.U.S.A. movie (you tube will do) and then you will clearly see that Greece is no even close to debt than of USA. Yet every one is taking about it.

Jim I love to read your doomsday economic reports from my perch of unemployment and insolvency. They keep me from falling into a vortex of self pity If anyone out there would like to contribute or help with my blog. I would appreciate the hand. aimlow.com/ It is my attempt to counteract the malaise of my current situation.

Looks like Europe’s headed for a ‘Greece fire’. I’ve read there’s fears the Euro will collapse when Greece falls into the pit. I believe it will. If it does will the Dollar skyrocket and with it the price of oil? I can only hope ’cause that would finally get the local yokels where I live to maybe begin to think about changing the way they live. Here in Toledo local government is trying, desperately to figure out a way to bridge a forty-eight million dollar budget short-fall. A city income tax increase has been proposed by the mayor (while he give his closest homies 26.6% pay increase) while rings a bell asking the state auditors to come in and see if they crunch the numbers more favorably. Meanwhile rampaging youth did their helter-skelter thing at a local Mall on Sunday – the cops had to treat each outbreak as small riot. It was quelled and now one local T.V station asked how this can be stopped in the future. The answer: close the damn malls down; rebuild shops and stores people can walk to. Will this rust-belt town which may become the epitome of what will happen to the nation at large listen? Well the cars are still running in massive numbers on the streets while the bus system keeps getting less funds to run – as the the yokels bet all their hopes for a revivification of the old days on a soon to be built Casino and on green tech. So, the answer is ‘No!”. Kicking and screaming will these folks go into what’s coming.

“From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards”reuters.com/article/idUSLDE61824V20100209

In my view, the World and the Europeans need to make a paradigm shift about Europe on two points;
1: In the last two thousand years, the locus of power in Europe has shifted. The region around the Adriatic (or Mediterranean) sea has little influence. Currently, the diamond squared area between London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris is where the shit is at. World leading on many accounts.
2: Southern Europe is a great region. Unfortunately, it is burdened with an inheritance of a glorious past. And that comes with an awful lot of cultural baggage (please forgive my sins, father). A patriarchal territory where family interest are deemed more important than the society as a whole. Corruption. They will need to change this and fast.
Fortunately, Europe is not in such dire straights as the mainstream media would like you to believe.
Difficult, yes. But that’s everywhere.
We have got our trains. We are on track in regards to renewable energy sources. And it goes fast. You are absolutely right about running out of oil, but Europe, small as it is will pass the end of oil test better than any other continent. Moveover, our alternative transportation infrastructure is superb.
I honestly believe that World can transform itself into a better place. Only vested interested can and quiet possilby will refrain us from achieving that goal. This is the only thing the United States will have to fight. The Enemy within. All the best.

“Mal comune, mezzo gaudio” as we say in Italy, seeing somebody worse off than us, makes us feeling a little better.
But usually it doesn’t work this way.
At least not in a globalized economy.
Because, either we like it or we don’t, we are all in the same boat.
It doesn’t really help the Greek that there is an underworld economy and the ones who will suffer most will be the state employees.
When you have a good business and your customers are mostly Greeks, when a part of them is suffering, sooner or later you suffer too.
And Greece is for Europe what the Greek state employees are for Greece: consumers.
If there is a bigger fight than the ones fought in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, is the fight for customers.
Their number is even more important than the oil supply.
Without them you are really finished.
Without oil you can more or less survive, without customers you cannot.
This is the classical scenario of a bail out in the name of Greece which in reality is a bail out for Germany and France and the rest of Europe.
When you have a hole in your boat you usually do not ask who did it, first you fill it, then may be…but just to prevent a new one.
Europe could be a great thing, if just worked, if people would understand that richness has to be shared to make new richness.

When I was a child, I visited my uncle’s very old mother.
She pointed to the mountains, miles away, and said that when she was a child, she rode her horse up there, back when Indians still were around.
My Dad explained recently that she rode up there to take a horse to her father. He was a farmer, but in the winter, he worked in a coal mine called Winter Camp. (How appropriate)
So, in the fall, she rode there with her father and brought his horse back, and in the spring, she took his horse to go get him to work the fields.
That’s how people used to commute.
My father, on the other hand, was lucky enough to live right next to the mine where his daddy worked. All 12 of them lived in a tiny company house.
That’s another solution.

Isn’t this exciting? All the nations and nation states are standing around in a giant circle-jerk each eying the other to see who “defaults” first. How much fun is that, huh?
I also love all the “I’m gonna plant a garden” and “my rifle will keep those city fellers out” posts that appear on this site.
Good luck with that, good luck.

One the one hand, Europe has a grown-up politics, compared to the U.S., that isn’t completely controlled by money. Effective public policy is at least a possibility there. On the other hand, the EU is set up to trump politics and subvert the deliberations of representative government to neoliberal axioms. Budget austerity is no more than answer there than it is here, and the EU, in its current incarnation of dictating how countries should be run through neolib dogma, is likely unworkable.
The fundamental problem in Europe, rather, is the same as it is in the U.S. — a masssive diversion of wealth out of the productive economy and government into the FIRE sector (Germany being an obvious exception). European real estate prices over the last several years have never made any sense relative to the wealth created in those countries. Unlike Americans, Europeans are simply not going to trade away government, and its possibilties of addressing the common good, for debt enslavement. Will be interesting to watch the fate of the EU, a relic of the ’90s neolib consensus, as it sorts all this out.
For a free download of Kunstlerian-style invective — Words that Draw Blood — go to http://www.lost-vocabulary.com

One thing that Jim didn’t touch on was the rather precarious state of Eastern Europe, especially Ukraine – a nation that’s been on the verge of collapse for so long I’m amazed the wheels are still on. The Hryvna isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and many people aren’t getting paid at all. It’s so bad that dollars rule the roost, and well… there’s a long term solution!
If things get much worst then civil war is not beyond the realm of possibility, especially as ethnic tensions between Ukrainians and the sizable Russian minority escalate. We could be looking at Yugoslavia 2.0 – all I can say is thank god they gave up their nukes back in the early 90s. If things start to collapse big time, expect Russia to march the troops into a breakaway Crimea and all hell to break lose elsewhere in Europe, especially if anything should interrupt the supply of gas into Western Europe.

“I also love all the “I’m gonna plant a garden” and “my rifle will keep those city fellers out” posts that appear on this site.”
Make sure you use your CFN handle when you cry to your neighbors for food. That way they’ll either recognize your lame ass from this blog, or they’ll be able to surmise that you have nothing concrete to offer.
Gardening is stupid. Don’t bother. Surely someone else will take care of you since you have so much of value to add to the annals of human history.

Note Monday’s NY Times story: Goldman Sachs helped Greece hide its financial situation.
“Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.”
Link to story:nytimes.com/2010/02/14/business/global/14debt.html
We continue to get evidence that the banks engineered the US crash and now in Europe, similar evidence is coming to light. We must confront this economic terrorism.

“But history, that prankster, in the awful melodrama of industrial capital’s demise, now seems to have backed lovely, reformed Europe into a corner as an early object-lesson in the agonies of de-complexifying and re-localization.” What happened to all that upbeat harping from the legion of American Europhiles who were predicting that the Aryan races would once again triumph over the overfed, bastardized Americans thanks to the marvels of an integrated, continental economy, high-speed rail and world-class public education? I remember having a conversation with a nice Slovene lady who was homesick for the generous social services and friendlier citizenry of her homeland. Listening to her list the benefits of EU citizenship, I wondered why anybody would leave such a paradise. She told me it was family tragedy that drove her here, and except for the lazy foreigners, life was idyllic.

I’m looking forward to the world you describe, a world at horse pace, where you can see individual flowers passing by, and hummingbirds flit along beside you keeping time. As industrial humans start to drink in the intoxicating motherliquor of nature’s panorama, they will also start to wake up from their individual nightmares. They’ll find the joy in a trout stream, the taste of fresh blueberries, the vibration of the farmer’s market, and the smell of rich humus too pleasant to worry about “going back.”
I think the biggest disconnect of all is this idea that post-peak life will consist of some sort of hellish moonscape of despair and want. Quite the contrary, the planet has already begun to heal from our cancerous expansion. Species of birds I haven’t seen in decades are moving back into town, violent crime is dropping, helping hands are being offered everywhere you look.
Sure, there will be a decrepit and weedy phase, but weeds repair soil tilth, and give way to fruit in the end.
Thanks for your wise and positive contribution to this list, Nurse Wage.

Here is Ilargi’s comment from The Automatic Earth on the Greek government’s financial collapse.
Ilargi: Talking to friends over the weekend about the revelations of Goldman Sachs involvement in Greek “fantasy accounting”, I said the EU should throw Goldman out and refuse to do any further business with the bank, but that I didn’t think they would given Goldman’s power in the financial markets. Late last night, former IMF man Simon Johnson wrote that he thinks the EU will indeed ban Goldman. Well, it would certainly would be a good step. Don’t kick Greece out of the EU, but Goldman Sachs.theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
Jim knows how to pick his villians.

I certainly don’t accept the stats as fact, just something to review, and then apply some critical thinking to….we’re all very interconnected now, no escaping that fact, for better or worse.
Also, part of my point was that Greece has 10m people, the EU has over 450m, they play such a small part and much of the euro zone is very healthy.
And, just read today about all kinds of ways the Europeans are saving more energy, like by putting seaweed in the street lamps, weird and wacky stuff that really assists the energy issue. As an American I’m completely surprised all the time how conscious people over here are about energy, not nearly as insatiable as we are…
Ozone, not sure what the whole GS is about but I wonder what part the accounting rules played into it; the IFRS (accounting standards the rest of the world uses) compared to the GAAP (what the US call accounting standards) for example, did Greece go to GS and say, “listen, we want to play but we need you to play with the numbers, so please make us appear ‘healthier’ than we are…so they can and do, BECAUSE they use US standards which are different and much more complicated than the rest of the worlds’ accounting standards…they weren’t necessarily breaking the law, just bending the rules…hence this whole clusterfuck of a problem to begin with…but i’ll check out the other sites…
I’m surrounded by ‘international economists’ which are simply glorified bean counters, so what should we expect?..not much. I can assure you, if I could afford it, I’d buy a place in Italy, retire and grow my own wine and food, certo….

Don’t the Greeks read their very own Aesop?
Being fervent believers of the new paradigm of free lunches, the grasshoppers of the world have been partying all Summer long when the ants were busy stocking up. Now, Winter is fast approaching. We shall see if the ants will bail the grasshoppers out. Problem is, the modern day testosterone laden grasshoppers have a couple of Glocks, Sigs etc in their fiddle cases. I don’t see a good ending to Aesop’s sequel.

As you watch Europe it is important to remember that this is “our parents” that we are talking about here… England is our mother… and well.. nobody’s quite sure who the father is….
And the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, whatever lessons England learned from hundreds of years of empire building will come back and revisit us so that we can have our own learning curve.
The same way the Brit’s left India… so too will we leave Afghanistan… as Gandhi told the British generals… “you will leave”. Of course a little man in a large diaper looking outfit was not viewed as a threat by the British… history has sided with Gandhi of course, and now we know the rest of the story.
Meanwhile… over at Suburban Empire we have an interview with Charles Hugh Smith… author of “Survival +” and the popular “Of two minds” bloghttp://www.suburbanempire.com

Even in lieu of responses of jhk’s monday blogs (which I read now regularly) several points: 1)do that garden anyway if even to reconnect to gaia 2)know that the greek ‘ripple’ could have a tsunami-like effect down the road to U.S. 3)we are a paper-thin distance from an 18th century existence with any major disruption (shit with iran)in our goddamn oil supply line—- ADVICE? carpe diem and enjoy it while it lasts

I agree with jeffgeb: plant that garden.
Nothing tastes better than picking fresh vegetables, cooking them, and eating them right away. BUT gardening is no easy task. It takes a lot of time and effort and ultimately, Mother Nature is in charge.

Mention of Canada’s rail policy invites comment on recent abandonments of Canadian wheat rr branchlines, and attempts to adapt trucking to the grain haul. How sad to get this far into the Oil Interregnum with operating rail branchlines and yet, in the 11th hour, do exactly the wrong thing! O Canada!
Probably the amount Canada spends into Afghanistan would be sufficient to maintain marginal rail lines, holding them over as the oil crisis becomes apparent to the powers that be. Not to rush foreign policy, just sayin’… It certainly might be scary for Militant Islam to contemplate a world focusing on railways, not so much rubber tire transport. It seems we must throw $Trillions more into OPEC before we are forced to do what a sensible body politic would do willingly… Like China. China builds generic & High-Speed railways at a record pace.
As for Uncle Sap, certainly any measurable fraction of the $$ for importing motor fuel diverted to systematic rehab of the 200,000+ dormant rail branchlines vacated since circa WWII, would turn about things here. As Jim K. has so often lamented, the simple mention and de-minimus effort expended to shift back to a rail based commercial economy would be like a tonic to a weary soul. Our President disappoints us and will disappoint historians as well.
As witness to the first real “Boss” of the Teamsters: James Hoffa and his boasting of “Muffling The Rumble of the Railroads” circa 1960, I expect to se the current Mr. Hoffa preside over the slide down, the other side of the hill made by the oil boom. The Teamsters are going to figure greatly in how America rides through the oil Interregnum, of that there is no doubt. Now, the people, drivers and mechanics and suppliers and families that keep the trucks moving must get savvy on Oilwell Depletion ASAP.
Counter-intuitive as it may sound, truckers are a most obvious pool of competent people to effect the shift back to railway based mobility in America. While the Chicago brotherhood in the White House diddles with the energy emergency, the truckers can do what the Tea Pot gang cannot: understand the need to do the nuts & bolts reconstruction of Transport in America.
Truckers can begin by getting familiar with the RR Rules: “The General Code Of Rulers” AKA “GCOR”, which is on the web and can be downloaded & printed for study. Of course anyone can do this, but people in rubber tire transport have the largest stake in being ready for the Postcarbon transportation era. Prioritization of the dormant rail branches for rebuild will be assisted by truckers, who know the traffic patterns for agricultural products, necessities of life and victuals, etc. Manufacturing corridors, including those with plants having potential to come back on-stream, are up with the agricultural line rebuilds.
Just as statisticians look for the greatest concentration of dots to determine a line, this may be applied to situating new rail feeders where no previous legacy rr might have existed.
As America pulls military back from around the world, logistics units will again step into the Railroad Operating & Maintenance Battalion role. Army/Guard units in each of the States will have their purview of responsibility, initially to expedite reconstruct of the priority rail branches. As America strains to maintain a minimum health care level, the Russian model of railway clinics will appear, with rr logistics battalion clinics an early model here.
Watching the Mike O’Dells of the computer establishment talking at Davos is a reminder of how oblivious the so-called movers & shakers are of what’s afoot… That is why real people, the ones with Tea Party enthusiasm and the innate enterprise of the men & women that deliver the goods on trucks are the elemental cadre’ for the job of getting America thru the Oil Interregnum.
Obviously, this is only a fraction of population segments affected. People in aviation are going to become railroaders, many who would have never dreamed of doing so. Likewise multitudes of distribution experts who built empires on highway transport, will quietly learn the ropes of rail transport. This new influx of brain power and skillsets will make the railway run better and even less energy intensive than now, and do what so many experts say is impossible: Make America Energy Independent.
There is a book, not a best-seller, offering insights into the subject of energy & mobility independence: “ELECTRIC WATER”, by Christopher C. Swan (New Society Press, 2007). Written so that people in Washington D.C. can understand it.

What I love about James Howard Kuntsler is the sheer joy he revels in with each new nail pounded into the coffin of civilization. There is nobody who salivates over societal collapse more lovingly than Mr. K.
It’s as if he’s got the patent on doom and is watching the money start to roll in. It’s this glee that gives his writing such panache.
I propose that we call this masturbatory glee in the face of bad news “kuntslering.” As in, “Ed sure seems to be kuntslering over global warming,” or, “Gawd, did Suzy give herself a kunstler over that car wreck the other night, or what?”
If we’re going down, we might as well kuntsler it.
Of course, for Jim, it puts him in the unhappy position of those guys who are always predicting the end of the world: Yay, I was right! Blam.

Yeah, JK, we must be always reading the same news sources. I was wondering just how Greece will be “bailed out” of reality.
Perhaps, the PTB can use some of these efforts as a model. My own limited intellect posits the notion that a set of mathematical functions can be agreed upon by all the banksters to “factor” downward the exponentially bogus trash notes so that all players retrench their soon too be recognized liabilities equally.
Of course, I can’t begin to hazard any guess as to which player this “fair play” leave underwater.
But at least in my version of playing money GOD we don’t go replaying the killings of millions in the name of WAR reparations.
But I digress….. Later.

Apologies for lack of clarity about the “200,000 or so” branchlines, actually rough estimate of railway MILEAGE abandoned since the Ike’s Freeway contribution to the Military-Industrial Complex.
Armchair transport policy enthusiasts can obtain “US Rail Atlas Map Volumes” from spv.co.uk and get familiar with the operating, as well as, missing tracks nearby.
It may happen that the US railway rebuild program shall coincide with motor fuel rationing, brought about by dollar devaluation, Middle East military actions, or accelerated demand beyond ability to supply. Probably combination. Certainly large corporates with interest in maintaining smooth distribution will seek to determine how near the railway footprint, past & present, lies with respect to their warehousing and outlets. WalMart, USPS, UPS, Sears, anyone with a truck dock! US Chamber of Commerce? American Enterprise Institute? CATO? Come ON! Oh, did we mention railway executives; anyone peak oil savvy? Mr. Hamberger & AAR Board?
Early Baby Step can be emplacement of container handling enroute rail mains at places formerly having platform or sidings, so trucking disperses away from large terminal concentrations. This is simple Homeland Defense… And the commuter rail lines can, in many cases, have container movement as add-on. Certainly, new design parameters for light rail & commuter rail should include arrangement for night movement and handling of victuals, etc.
The emergency (any sort of emergency) comes by things beyond our control, as well as, mistakes we make along the way. It is not too late.

“an early object-lesson in the agonies of de-complexifying and re-localization”.
Re-localization would’ve been a rational path to follow both here and in Europe, but that would require more physical labor, and most folks here and in Europe have been corrupted by the slave of fossil fuel. A few years ago I hiked all over the island of Kea off the coast of Greece. The island has been heavily terraced over the centuries, and various crops have been grown there for ages (oats, barley, wheat, olives, vegetables, etc.). But now the terraces are collapsing/eroding with disuse, because young people prefer to do other work, they can make more money working as electricians or computer techs, farming is too hard. Twice a week a tanker ship docks at the Korissia port and several tanker trucks fill up with gasoline and diesel and take it to several gas stations on the island. There’s an electric cable from the mainland too. The island used to be self-sufficient, a local guy told me a story how in the 19th century a pirate boat circled the island to prey on any vessels leaving or arriving at Kea, but apparently the islanders were able to sustain themselves within the local economy, and did so for almost a year until an English gunship chased the pirates off. These days Kea would not last long without external inputs — although there are some water springs, most of the water treatment and distribution requires electricity.
There are still old guys riding Donkeys and Horses for transport, and the main village (Loulis) has no road leading into it, all deliveries into the village are by Donkey from the parking lots on either end of the village.
Until the mentality of the 21 Century man (and woman) changes to recognize that growing your own food is a dignified and worthy pursuit, and ocupations other than high-tech, marketing and media, law, etc. are fulfilling and honorable even when they involve working with your hands, the status quo will continue until the financial markets collapse under the weight of debt, or Peak Oil derails the business as usual.

You know, Jimmy, for all your gonzo journalism clichés, and your pretense at being a voice in the wilderness, you’re disappointingly as dumb and dense as those you would criticize. Yes, yes, demonize Iran. A little anti-Muslim bigotry infecting old Kunstler, maybe.
The same criminals who led us into an illegal war on Iraq on the pretense of a lie, are now back for Iran and here’s our omni-critic de jour, Kunstler, propagating their lies.
The twin evils of Israel and the USA have attacked and/or engaged in violence against Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, and let’s not forget the victims of ethnic cleansing and supremacist genocide, Palestine.
So, Jimmy, we know when the last time the US invaded a defenseless country and we know the last time the fearsome Israeli arm took up arms against women and children, but when was the last time Iran engaged in a belligerent war against one of its neighbors?
As a student of history surely you know. So, why would the Germans or the French give one fuck about Iran except as a place to buy some oil?
Quit being a hate monger, Jimmy. We have neo-cons, and guys in white robes for that.

My mother lived on a farm during the depression,
and she said there was a steady stream of city fellers who stopped by for a meal. Hobo’s in the old days.
The basics of human life– food, water, and shelter never go out of style.
Planting a garden is alot smarter than counting on that corporate cubicle job or SSN or the Wall Street Boys investing your 401K.

JKH may be out of a job, people will be too busy
working to read his entertaining gloomy bullshit.
Ain’t America wonderful. A little tap tap into the electrictronic nether world, and a man earns his daily bread. Snake Oil is alive and well.

Excellent (not said as Montgomery C. Burns would!).
Being an European, I find this very relevant! We are simply not aware of what is going to hit us.
I live in Denmark and many people are misled into believing that Denmark is a “green” country on the forefront of the climate battle. Nothing could be more wrong!
We have an ignorant government (and parliament) that does everything they can to block initiatives within renewable energy, electric cars and public transport.
As an example, there are lot of entrepreneurs that would like to convert an ICE car to electric drive here in Denmark. OK, you are allowed to do it, but the government will demand that you have a “special EV test” done. That will set you back 30.000 US Dollar!!!! So much for the green initiative.
Maybe Europe has a better public transport, but we are probably more unaware about Peak Oil than the US.
We have so much potential for getting off the oil addiction here in little Denmark but NOTHING is happening.
So Jim is right… we are probably as fucked here in Europe as you are in the US! 🙂
Venlig hilsen/best regards,
Danny Ankerhttp://www.energi1.dk

Really, we don’t have to do a thing about Iran developing an A bomb. Israel’s fantastic intelligence bureau will notify the Israeli armed services when Iran has the A bomb and Israel will completely destroy the facilities. How easy is that?
Of course, Israel would like us to do it, but they will in the end if left to their own devices. Just like they did of a Syria nuclear cache and Iraq in Operation Opera:
Operation Opera (Hebrew: ???? ??????, Mivtza Opera, also known as Operation Babylon and Operation Ofra) was a 1981 surprise Israeli air strike that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor being constructed in Osirak (French: Osirak; Iraqi: Tammuz 1).

Cynicism is easy. I am fortunate, in the inter-mountain west, to have a backyard, where I can experiment and grow and to have the energy and time to try canning my produce.
It is true Nickelthrower – that my time could be better spent. But I need my backyard, my books, my garden, it’s the little I feel that I can have these days in this place at this time.
I know that my garden can’t protect me so much from over-population and for profit agendas and everything breaking down – but I just keep experimenting and trying to grow things because it’s where my energy is and what I like to do. The local seed swap I look forward to each year – that’s my slow boring time/mind I’m boring you with – where people are giving you something expecting nothing and so happy to do so – hobbies.

Well Jim, I can tell you why we never bought our kids a second luge after our experience with our first one. When my daughter was about three, my wife and I went to Mammoth Lakes ski resort in northeastern California. We bought a brand new aluminum oval luge and wanted to try it out. We were at the top of a large hill looking down into a snow covered valley. We placed our daughter on the luge and pushed her down the hill. There was only one tree down in the entire valley and my daughter squealed with excitement as her little luge increased speed. Then my wife and I noticed to our horror that the luge was heading directly at the one tree. We couldn’t believe it at first but we started running downhill and about halfway there my daughter bounced off the tree and lay in the snow. We thought for sure that we had killed our precious baby. I will admit that she was stunned when we reached her but she didn’t even whimper or cry. What a relief! But it was an early introduction to Murphy’s Law for me and my wife. My daughter never got on a luge again although I’m not sure if this one incident was the reason for that. She preferred summer sports which Southern California has plenty of. It did teach me one lesson and that is to always be prepared for the unexpected. I think a lot of American investors should really take that to heart although I doubt they will. We had one tree to worry about. Americans have an entire forest in front of them but they are plummeting down the hill screeching with delight because they believe that Dow 30,000 is just in front of them.
I will agree that young European men could easily take the field again if the stars don’t align correctly for us. I think too many people watch the Military Channel and actually believe that all wars in the future will absolutely have to be fought with gas guzzling M1 Abrahm tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. Anyone who knows about history is well aware that Napoleon walked into Russia and captured Moscow without the use of internal combusion engines. Even many of Hitler’s troops were able to confront the Allies in Normandy by successfulling attacking “off the line of march” which is one of the most difficult things an army can successfully pull off. Unfortunately for all of us, entire nations can bloody Europe once again even without the help of gas guzzling machines of war. America is no exception since we fought 4 years of civil war using horses and feet (and a few trains).

Israel’s fantastic intelligence bureau will notify the Israeli armed services when Iran has the A bomb and Israel will completely destroy the facilities. How easy is that?

This will never happen because it would be suicide… and Israel will not provoke its own demise.
Iran should never to be confused with Syria or Iraq.
The day Israel attacks Iran will be the day Israel commits suicide.
Besides, we have Israel’s word that it will not attack Iran.

Israel will not attack Iran even if the international sanctions against Tehran fail to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up his country’s nuclear program, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Austrian daily Kleine Zeitung. In an interview published this weekend, Lieberman was asked whether Israel planned to strike Iran as a last resort.

I wrote this on Dec 25:
“The Greek economy reeks — watch for Greece to get dropped from the Euro monetary system, or the Euro monetary system to go broke trying to support Greece’s economy. If Greece gets bailed out then Portugal, Italy and Spain will want to be saved as well. Either way it’s bad news for the Euro.”
It’s interesting watching it play out. It also will have effects here in the US.

james, you said a lot of stuff in a short essay. There will be a huge paradigm shift, and Greece, as well as the Eurozone, along with the US and the factory-floor nations of the world will all experience it.
There will be a shrinkage, a downsizing, and a new view of what spending and employment really means. Our government will be reshaped, at some point, but the Godzilla crisis has not yet really arrived yet, therefore, a real economic restructuring has not been brought into the light. There are too many cowards, and thieves inside government. The states will be getting hit over the next few years.
Hopefully soon, there will be a knock at the Pentagon’s door by millions of Americans saying that the Bush/Obama Endless Wars must end now!!! The war profiteering stimulus package must end.
Yes, it will all look different for the younger generations, as well as the near-elderly, too. Those who are resourceful and conscious of the way it will all unfold will be OK.
I enjoy reading your pieces. I surely hope you have a way to decrease your stress levels. I do!!http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

“I don’t see a good ending to Aesop’s sequel.”
I think you will find that the ants have also prepared for their safety better than the grasshoppers.
asoka – how can you cite RP after all the feces flinging you engaged in last week? Can’t you find a big government socialist to quote that will tell the truth about Iran?

Greetings,
I’ve got no problems with people that want to garden. As a matter of fact, I worked on my grandfather’s little farm as a boy and I picked row after row after row of vegetables which were then canned. The only reason I do not currently garden is that I live on a sailboat.
My point was that gardening and guns will not save us from what is coming. Skill at both will be required but I’m afraid that the few people that do prepare for the worst will be 100% overwhelmed by those that do not. Organization will break down and whatever group, gang, commune, etc can re-organize first will probably take what they can not produce.
No nation on Earth is more than 3 meals away from a Revolution – not one. That holds true for any community.

Wow, you are an angry cuss aint ya? Again, I could care less if you garden and, as a matter of fact, you could plant your head in the dirt for all I care.
I just love how these people just assume all kinds of crazy things based upon my post.
Get a life.

Israel will not attack Iran even if the international sanctions against Tehran fail to convince President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to give up his country’s nuclear program, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Austrian daily Kleine Zeitung.In an interview published this weekend, Lieberman was asked whether Israel planned to strike Iran as a last resort.

I can quote Ron Paul because I am not an ideologue.
An ideologue would simply oppose Ron Paul because he is Ron Paul, as many did with Bush, and many do now with Obama.
I am not an ideologue. I weigh what it is someone is saying and what evidence they provide to support their statements.Ron Paul, {and the National Intelligence agencies} in my opinion, is right about Iran.
You, in my opinion, are wrong about the federal government rulemakers being evil, or that the feds {ATF} was somehow responsible for the Timothy McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma. McVeigh acted alone {no Muslim John Doe 2} and went to his death maintaining he acted alone.

“Wow, you are an angry cuss aint ya?”
Only with the surprisingly-abundant number of folks ridiculing others for making preparations, ANY preparations, for an uncertain future.
I have a life. It’s filled with energy and love and compassion for the plight of others. You should try it some time. It’s very rewarding!

Hey, Tripp!
The permaculture seed has been planted and will bear fruit. The sooner the oil supply ends (and the fertilizer, pesticides, tractors, etc.) dependent on oil, the faster the permaculture movement will grow. History is on your side friend Tripp.

“You, in my opinion, are wrong about the federal government rulemakers being evil…”
I won’t take that from you. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it all turns out. Ain’t looking too swiffy from the back row.

Iran is an NPT signatory, which means its has the right to nuclear energy.
Israel refuses to sign the NPT, just as the US refuses to meet our own obligation under it, as well as UN SCR 687.
Jim, why do you refuse to think this through?
I’m not suggesting we become fans of Iran’s Islamic regime, but the notion that Iran is going to attack anybody is really quite crazy, and very much part of the script of those who want to block reform of the United States and its priorities.
And please don’t write back citing Iran’s aggressions. None exist, other than in words. That’s way more than can be said for “our” side.

“History is on your side friend Tripp.”
Thanks, Asoka, you’re right. I don’t know why I let people side-track me like Nickel did. There’s just so much work to do! When people hold tight to old cultural lines, especially at the expense of novel human activities necessitated by new market realities, it is extremely counter-productive, and insulting to everyone out there trying like hell to improve their odds. And I wish they’d just keep it to themselves.
Permaculture is flowering for sure, old friend, and I hope Nickelthrower finds his way back to the soil.
And I don’t mean that in a BAD way either.

Stands in stark contrast to the hatchet job he tried to pull last week. At least he is qualifying his statements now by saying things like, “In my opinion.”
It is amazing how a bit of humility can flower when the arrogance of conjecture is constantly confronted by strong argument and a well-defined challenge to make arguments based on the merits of high standards of scholarship. Even minimal standards in his case would be a far cry from the 3rd grade playground stylings we had to witness last week.
“I am not an idealogue.” Howls of laughter from anyone who reads CFN even occasionally. Please. Witness last week’s ongoing rants of conjecture. That’s okay though.
What is important is that our boy take the scholarly challenge and find his way out of the woods or enlighten us all with something major that everyone but he seems to have missed.
With any luck, he will, and in a few months or a year send us the link to the site with the results of his response. Will be interesting.

Fat, fluffy, little White Sheep say to each other, “Gee it will be great when the Master dies and we can get out of this place and enjoy the beauties of Nature. Meanwhile a couple of hundred yards away a gang of Wolves are watching, licking their chops and high fiving each other.
The Moral? You need long legs and curved horns to enjoy the beauties of Nature. After all, you can only enjoy them if you are alive and not someone’s else’s dinner. That’s Nature boys and girls, rams and ewes. The poor little sheep don’t stand a chance. It would take generations for them to devolve back to what they once were. They’ve been bred up too far and Nature just isn’t that forgiving. Same with our cattle. Same with our pigs. And same with most White People – just too dumbed down and softened up to even be able to imagine how bad it’s going to be.
The Wealthy who know the Law of the Jungle known as the Market, know and are preparing. Some are leaving, other buying guns and digging in. And of course, their communities have armed gurards. However physically soft they are, mentally they are tougher than the helpless, hopeless middle class Liberal Americanus – a doomed breed destined for extinction.
Colin Fletcher, the great walker, was convinced that Mountain Sheep had a sense of aesthetics. They would choose the most scenic cliffs and ridges to stare off into space. The moral? No moral, just an interesting aside, ok? I’m not saying I believe it either. But he seems like a sensible fellow. Of course the materialist would say that the sheep just chose the spot with the best view for self defence.

Europe has a few things figured out that the US doesn’t:
1)Europeans use wind and solar power much more extensively than in the states. Solar panels are common even on very modest homes
2) Europeans who drive, drive smaller cars and the gas prices are high enough to encourage the use of cars with better mileage or the use of public transportation.
3) Europeans have an extensive public transportation that works. People can live in a small village and still get where they need to go.
Here’s a link to the US High Speed Rail Association’s proposed map of a new rail system in the US to be installed by 2030. Their conference is in Florida in March. Even with this system, we would need local bus and “low speed” rail to connect.ushsr.com/phasingplan.html

I’d have to concur that there’s no reason to NOT prepare for the downshift, whether through gardening, learning food preservation, retrofitting your dwelling with a wood stove, working with your community, etc. Even arming and learning to shoot. But I also agree that the majority who are not prepared, coupled with their probable freaked out mindset, means that preparation alone is no bulwark against the starving rabble.
Regardless, fear and, more particularly, scenarios of absolutely inescapable doom, or scenarios lingering in every permutation of exponential disaster, or scenarios on a global scale do little to awaken a meaningful drive to participate individually and in one’s community, to do what we can to at least try to mitigate the potential worst.
In the last week there have been two Peak Oil stories in the main stream media–one in the Wall Street Journal, the other a wire story on Saudi Arabia’s oil minister or something saying that SA is on the precipice of peak oil, only they called it “peak demand.” That that sounds like coded rich people talk for peak oil is another story, but the larger point remains that Peak Oil is getting some surprising play in the news. Now, its not the first time that has happened, but I think its worth taking note that it is happening right now.
Perhaps Peak Oil is about to have its moment, perhaps its about to get a place at the table of conversation. If so, let’s hope that the wisest of the prophet voices are called upon to participate in that dialog, and can make the right calls at the right time about how to disseminate information that is helpful to a world in resource decline but which is simultaneously the poster child of Idiocracy. What do we say? What do we do?
My theory is that there’s some balance to be struck that is not wholly survivalist and not entirely Pollyanna on the green thing. At any rate, I believe you get more bees with honey than with vinegar. That doesn’t mean there’s no value to casting our gaze over the global context and playing a mental game of RISK concerning the would-be behavior of the cast of characters. That’s fun too. Its like that exchange from Saving Private Ryan:
Captain Brian Hamill: You got to take Caen so you can take Saint Lo.
Captain John Miller: You’ve got to take Saint Lo to take Valognes.
Captain Brian Hamill: Valognes you got Cherbourg.
Captain John Miller: Cherbourg you got Paris.
Captain Brian Hamill: Paris you got Berlin.
Captain John Miller: And then that big boat home.
—
But history seldom unfolds in accordance with our crystal balls, and either way, the more practical hedge against a changing resource picture lies in building knowledge of the known while operating in practical alignment to it.

I have read your posts.
Nicklethrower made a good point there Trippticket.
You are a smart guy and have made all your prepartions with your own food source. Now these angry hungry hoards of people come looking for a meal out of ole Tripptickets plot. You might want to build a few German style pill boxes around your abundant harvest, and a couple of moats from the Middle Ages. Enjoy your garden, but he is right it ain’t going to save anyones ass if all this speculated doom and gloom comes to pass.
I grow alot of my own food too. It ain’t easy, but you get a sense of satisfaction from the process.

I recently finished reading a critically important book by Professor William R. Catton, Jr., entitled, Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change.” I not only consider it one of the most influential books I have ever read, but I believe it ranks as one of the most important books ever written, period. I encourage everyone to seek it out and read it immediately!!
Then you will really understand what is going on and why there is really nothing one can do to prevent it. Its an end game for a failed species I’m afraid.

vlad, what is your game plan? i sincerely want to know.
you think gardening as a preparation is synonymous with fattened lambs waiting to be slaughtered by ravenous hoards. everybodys got to be somewhere doing something. its better than inching along a freeway to some bullsh*t job. since i cant golden parachute out into my rancherita in paraguay i guess i will have to stand, which is fine, because i think i am a go down with the ship kind of person.
nobody knows when or how bad its going to go. in the meantime, why not live the way you want to? as remote as i am, the “hoards” will have to burn through a tractor load of good ol boys, the kind of people lots of CFNer’s love to joke about. after that ive got the rhodeisan ridgeback brigade, attack chickens and a ruger ranch rifle. of course, i could always watch “first blood” a few more times and perfect my booby-trapping the forest skills.
my point is: its just life. you do the best you can in the way that suits your nature. however you plan to react -or pro act, i salute you.

Blueberry Jackson: i want to talk to you off this site. in macon: you will love the H and H soul food kitchen which is run by the cooks who went on the road with the allman brothers in the 70’s. they know what to do with a catfish! and fresh creamed corn in a big cast iron skillet. welcome home!

Judetennessee writes Then you will really understand what is going on and why there is really nothing one can do to prevent it. Its an end game for a failed species I’m afraid.
Wow, it takes a whole lot of faith to buy into this guy’s book so wholly and to come to such a fixed conclusion. Even Einstein was less sure of the world’s moving parts.
There’s a whole other school of thought that says we get the world we envision.
Hey, the last thing I want is to be staring at the butt end of a shotgun while my children are being sauteeed up in a pan. Believe me, I reeled daily reading The Long Emergency. Things can get very, very ugly. But we are not powerless and we have inherited a history of great resilience. Peak Oil does not have to be synonymous with nihlism or anomie. Doing so wastes the possible purpose any of us has in raising the clarion call now, and threatens to prevent us from leading on all fronts possible to work this mess toward the good while we can.

“vlad, what is your game plan? i sincerely want to know. you think gardening as a preparation is synonymous with fattened lambs waiting to be slaughtered by ravenous hoards.”
Dear Vlad, if I might intercede; he seems to be “without wax”. If you use the big gun, aim high.

Gardening is more than a “preparation” for some future time when food might be scarce. It is a way to begin being a producer instead of just being a consumer of things produced by others. It is a way to develop manual skills that most people don’t have anymore. It is a way to get your body in shape. It is a way to provide yourself and your family & friends with pesticide-free food that is fresher and more nutritious than food that has travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to your grocery store. It is a way to have something to look at outside your home besides grass, and something to chat with your neighbours about. And if things do get so bad in future that some goons come and take it away, at least you’ve had the pleasure of eating from it until then. There are also creative ways to store root crops in the ground so that they can’t be discovered by thieves. Those who say it can’t be done should stop deriding those who are doing it!

Jim, get your head out.
It was socialism entitlements that have killed Europe and the borrowing to pay for benefits that nobody could afford.
The entire system of socialism as you NE liberals wish to practice is a ponzi scheme.
Greece is a nation with very LOW total and household debt/GDP. Only their government is deeply indebted. There will be no depression there because they are relatively rich.
And why is Greece so indebted? Well, because the oligarchs that control the socialist government got the sovereign to borrow heavily to fund “projects” and lots of cushy jobs and entitlements to get the proles to buy into the system, so that these same oligarchs could profit HEAVILY off of the extra government spendola.
That is how socialism and big gov’t works. The elites put the sovereign in debt like the Bamboo Lounge, and they pocket pocket pocket their share of the spending to enhance their already vast fortunes.
And morons in the USA want “health care reform”??? How is that going to be different than EVERY OTHER large program which only serves to build another ponzi and vastly enrich the plutocrats? This may be news to you guys, but at the other end of almost every dollar of government spending is a business interest looking to profit and doing so handsomely.
I know a guy who was in Bill Clitton’s cabinet, a senior position. He lives in a $10M house. Being a part of the “party of the people” and a “liberal” has obviously been incredibly profitable. I wonder why that is…
Throw every incumbent out, including all Repugnicons. Cut spending, retract government before we end up Greeced

I’ve always had huge doubts about the workability of a Euro currency.
Economics is as useless as astrology (and I say that as an economics major) but one thing that I learned that seemed to make sense was that for a the Euro to work for the area there has to be enough mobility of capital and enough mobility of labour bewteen Euro countries. So there has to be minimal impediment to Germans who want to move to and work in Italy etc. But in practice this does not work. The barrier is language and culture.
I’ve run across a lot of people that seem to think that most/all Europeans are multi-lingual so if a Frenchman wants to move to Germany, no problem, and also that they all know English. That does not square with my own experience nor with basic common sense. There are a few people I’ve met that can function in a few languages, but not many, and I’ve seen a fair number of Europeans that know a bit of English but are no way functionally literate.
This nonsense about multi-lingualism led my former employer to re-locate its European and Canadian accounts payable to Budapest from various locations in Europe and Canada thinking that Hungarians can read anything in any European language.
During the whole planning phase of this debacle I stood in the periphery muttering quietly “this won’t work”. Quietly because the motto in that place is lead, follow or get out of the way. Not wanted are naysayers, common sense or sober second thought. So all for one, one for all, over the cliff we go.
So it was fun to watch Hungarian A/P workers screw up everything they touched because they couldn’t read invoices and correspondence in Italian/German/French/Dutch etc. It was a disaster. Their English emails to me were undecipherable. I would have had an easier time if they wrote in Hungarian. Note to file: Hungarians function in Hungarian, Italians in Italian, Germans in German.
Before the adoption of the Euro, if I had been an honest, hardworking citizen of a northern European country ie a German pensioner or worker, would I have wanted to give up being paid in the mighty Deutschmark to share a currency with asshole countries like Italy and Greece? No chance, why would I, they’re so corrupt even their cats have pimps. But the guilt of WW2 was still hanging so they kept quiet. Too bad for them.
Which brings up the issue of culture. These places are too divergent culturally to share a currency. La dolce vita in Italy with its appreciation of food, wine, couture, taking it easy and having a good time looks like a serious behavioural problem to Germans.
There is such a thing as the Protestant work ethic and for people that have this ethic it is maddening to work with people that don’t. They should not share a currency because it isn’t fair to honest people that get up early, get to work on time, work hard and efficiently. Italians with their easy going habits should not share a currency with Germans. It is not fair to Germans.

edpell
‘ February 14, 2010 7:33 PM | Reply
China plans to invest $1000 billion dollars in fast trains. The US plans to invest $4 billion dollars in fast trains. LOL LOL LOL up get what you pay for.’
We invested our Trillion in the banksters thanks to Obama.
JIM K:
I read last weeks NYTimes and WSJournal and 2 articles really caught my eyes!
1…MARKETS GO UP ON RUMOR OF GREEK BAILOUT
2…a 41 year old woman has 1/2 million in student loans owed. shes an MD. now she wonders how she can get loans for a house and car. she has to put off getting pregnant. at 41!!!!

the danes, they are the most carniverous country, yes?
‘Denmark is a “green” country ‘…ah the MYTH OF GREEN!
I just finished a class in solar panels with the guy who tends one of kunstlers eyesores, the solar parking structure in so cal! hes no ordinary green. he has a masters and is MIT trained.
so after i finish this class a mr li [ who ive never met] sends me a survey asking if this one intro class ‘ alnded me a green job’!!!
the myth of green.

Man and woman dont live by wheels and heels alone!Europe is finished. Eurrabia is here. read the posts here about 30,000$ to convert a car and cash transactions land you in jail.I could share some similar stories but they are too personal.

Cyber, you say:
“The same criminals who led us into an illegal war on Iraq on the pretense of a lie, are now back for Iran and here’s our omni-critic de jour, Kunstler, propagating their lies.’
An illegal war. Now there’s a concept. It seems to me that war by definition is an abandonment of civilized behaviour, law and any notion of due process, fairness etc. “War” and “legal” don’t belong in the same room.
I heard that US military commanders in Afghanistan plan airstrikes with a weaponeer on their left and a lawyer on their right. What on earth would lawyers be doing on a battlefield? I wonder if allied commanders in WW2 had lawyers breathing down their necks? I doubt it because if it were so the Nazi Swastika might still be flying over Europe with Hitler ending his days in the comfort of a German nursing home.

“Their wealth will be plundered –
their houses demolished.
They will build houses
but not live in them;
They will plant vineyards,
but not drink the wine.”
“Neither their silver nor their gold
will be able to save them
on the day of the Lord’s wrath.
In the fire of his jealousy
the whole world will be consumed,
for he will make a sudden end
of all who live on the earth.”
“Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
you who do what he commands.
Seek righeousness, seek humility,
perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s anger.”
“Woe to the city of oppressors,
rebellious and defiled!
She obeys not one,
she accepts no correction,
She does not trust in the Lord,
she does not draw near to her God.
Her officials are roaring lions,
her rulers are evening wolves,
who leave nothing for the morning.”
……. ZEPHANIAH

JIM K:
are you reading?
And here at home, we have the spectacle of the Hell-no-I-won’t-pay-anymore-taxes crowd raging at the Machine in Albany who are closing prisons right and left and demanding their state jobs be left intact
and californias ‘early release’ program.today
ON THE RADIO I HEARD THAT UTAHS THINKING OF ENDING ‘ SENIOR YEAR’.I figured that meant ending a holiday for seniors.
NO THEY WANNA ELIMINATE 12TH GRADE IN ALL THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

On a very separate note I got an offer for a years subscription to the LA TIMES and the beverly reporter…for 75 or 79$.
DELIVERED TO MY HOUSE…FOR A YEAR.
Last time i looked at what was left of Newsweek it was about 54 pages.

If Greece defaults Europe will just have to bend over and take it.
Peak oil rule #1 which I shall define as:
‘Existing status quo and power structures shall be maintained as long as possible despite overwhelming evidence that the existing status quo is unsustainable.’
Greece will be bailed out but hopefully the resulting debt will stay in Europe and not be added to our own national debt. American bailouts are intended for rich Americans not foreigners.
But since the American open border policy flies in legal alien foreign high tech workers to fill ‘vacant’ American high tech jobs to disenfranchise college graduates and because our low tech jobs are already filled by illegal aliens who disenfranchise high school graduates as well as high school dropouts then being an American does not really mean anything anymore.
Hmmmmmm – Might as well just bail out Greece then. We are all bending over and taking it anyway, whats a little more?

“The same criminals who led us into an illegal war on Iraq on the pretense of a lie, are now back for Iran and here’s our omni-critic de jour, Kunstler, propagating their lies.”
People forget that Iran and Iraq had a nice little war going until Colin Powell brokered a peace. The attrition was massive and way exceeds the recent slaughter.
Left alone the middle easterners would be killing each other off with relish right now, all in the name of the same “god”.
Of course, they would still be blaming the West, ie USA agents, etc.

“I grow alot of my own food too. It ain’t easy, but you get a sense of satisfaction from the process.”
You do indeed. Even more so when you do it organically. But an even greater satisfaction is to teach others how to do it, and in the process build a community of self-reliance and mutual respect. That time is not in full swing yet, but it’s coming fast.
Just a point of refutation for Vlad in the argument: there are lots of poor people already, lots of poor people that aren’t white, most of them in fact. And they aren’t mobbing together and killing people for their carrots. So if the social chaos and torches and pitchforks are imminent, as he, Jim K, and you here are saying, then we must lay that fear and chaos at the feet of those to whom it belongs:
White middle-class European descendants.
judetennessee points us to a great book:
“Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change,” gives a clear ecological outline of our species’ demise, which I think is extremely likely given the paucity of preparations for, or even awareness of, the situation we face in the industrial world. As an ecologist, everything in my experience tells me that our species, by and large, will fall. But as a human and a permaculturalist, I will not lay down before the wolves and accept that fate. Instead, I will spend every day of my life working to bring self-reliance to people who are not evil, or despotic, but rather entranced by a dying system that has worked for more than 10 millenia.
Helen Highwater says:
“Those who say it can’t be done should stop deriding those who are doing it!”
Well said, Helen. And precisely my point to Nickelthrower.

Helen, that was such a beautiful reply to the paranoids re: gardening.

And if things do get so bad in future that some goons come and take it away

This goon scenario is not going to happen. I don’t know if it has ever happened. It is just paranoid CFN doomster fantasy.
Goons are not particularly drawn to organic carrots. They like gold and guns.
P.S. A seven-layered permaculture garden would see even less chance of intrusion, as it probably won’t even be recognized as a garden. Another reason to go permaculture.

Dovey! Glad you’re back. I haven’t had a good catfish in a long time. I will look them up post haste upon my return!
Don’t know if I can (or should) do this or not, but if you’re handy, my email is slowfoodguy(at)yahoo(dot)com. Hit me up soon as you can.
Blueberry

Yeah we have way too may poor non Whites – it’s going to be real bad. Why not yet? Why Trip, they’re all on food stamps and they’re eating off the public largesse. And what happens when that runs out? And yes hungry urban Whites are going to be right there with them. Alot of these young White Kids worship Blacks and have rejected millenims of Western Culture for African Savagery. But anyone can be dangerous if they get hungry enough – including poor rural Whites and rich urban yuppies.

When Trip goes into his Zippity Do Dah rap, it always set me off. He’s a lovely man but when he talks like that he just sounds like some kind of hippie Uncle Remus and I have to lower my horned head and knock him down. I can’t help it gov’nor. It’s like what Wage said about Sex – it’s just natural, what I do. Where all just animals, right?

Fuck Nature, and fuck Nature’s god. Hey, I’m not the first person who ever said this, but I think it’s a great line. Bears repeating here. Not really true of how I feel: I just don’t think nature can be sentimentalized. We’ve tamed her; we just haven’t seen the last of her. Even so, I think nature is a bitch goddess who cares fuck all and I’m glad that humans, at least for a time, showed her the finger. The monkeys got out of control! Then the monkey monkeys got out of control and had Richard Nixon tearing his hair out. Then the monkey monkey monkey monkeys got out of control and made a lot of shit Eighties music. Oh well. It’s was bound to end badly.
Now that we’ve all sobered up, we find there’s nothing to look forward to.

That’s a shame. Shopping by internet is great – if you know what you want. But sometimes you want something but you don’t know what. Hence the lost art of browsing. When bookstore clerks ask me if I’ve found everything I was looking for, I find it annoying. If I knew what I was looking for, I would have ordered it on line for less. I don’t bother saying anything; real lovers of books usally don’t work in the big chain bookstores.

I can’t disagree with any of that, Vlad. Which is why I think we have only a narrow window in which to make unprecedented changes in the way we relate to our ecosystem.
Iceland was capable of doing so. Norse Greenland was not. And they were both “pure cultures.” Very similar, almost identical, pure white cultures – as controlled a social experiment as we have access to. The Greenland Vikings refused to learn from “the Inuit savages” living nearby. They were Christian Europeans by god, and had nothing to learn from pantheistic Homo indomitus.
Nearly 5 centuries of Norse Greenland culture starved to death, surrounded by fish so thick in the water that you could almost walk across their backs. Why? Because of a cultural taboo against eating fish. Other Norse populations have no such taboos, and in fact acquire a large percentage of their calories from fish. But not the Greenlanders; fish were dirty to them.
Just as “people of color” are dirty to you, and have nothing to offer. You have 2 choices, my friend: radically change the way you think, or starve to death.

Asoka,
At the close of last week’s commentary, I issued you a specific intellectual and scholarly challenge. You never responded and I wouldn’t expect you to – at least not so soon. I think meeting the challenge will require a good year of two of research and serious thought. If you can do so sooner, kudos to you.
You did raise a final accusation against an elected representative. It needs to be addressed for two reasons. One, it is another patent lie that has very disturbing connotations about your beliefs in liberty, civil rights and standards of justice. Secondly, it is an example of the kind of scholarship that the challenge will not support, and how easily it will be debunked and refuted.
So relax, prepare your favorite winter beverage or libatation, put a Kunstler cake in the oven, and as the wonderful odor of that cheese-doodle casserole wafts into the den where you sit at your computer, enjoy the reckoning of how simply mis-quotation and mis-representation is debunked.
I.
You cited a report, (BIT.LY/BEU7JW), and stated that, “The report (2009) also credits Ron Paul with inspiring domestic political terrorism.” The report mentions Ron Paul once saying, “These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.”
That is the only mention of Ron Paul. It doesn’t credit Ron Paul with inspiring domestic political violence in the least. It merely names some of the people these people may or may not vote for. Is that your standard of proof that someone is a danger to society? Is that your standard of justice? What if the tables turned? What if anyone who voted for or put a Dennis Kucinich or Obama bumper sticker walked around with guns or criticized government institutions and policies or even committed violent crimes? Certainly some must. Does that make Kucinich or Obama their inspiration and co-conspirator? Their ringleader? I think not.
The report does not even state what you claim. If it did, it offers as its only proof that people who they accuse or suspect of being dangerous, who may not even have committed crimes, allegedly, “support”, (we can only assume they mean vote for), certain elected officials and candidates for office. How do they know who all those who support or vote for?
They don’t even go as far as you to say in their report that the political figure who they support is guilty of inspiring their crimes. If they did, they better offer a lot more proof than a bumper sticker or window placard or lawn sign argument. I certainly hope they wouldn’t subpoena the voting records of their suspects who don’t have bumper stickers of any elected official on their vehicles in an attempt to identify suspects and try them for crimes. I wonder; isn’t this something that could be used politically that is an evil cousin to methods that have been used to disenfranchise racial minorities or bar candidates from office that powerful elites fear? It sounds like it to me. No wonder people become distrustful and afraid of the government abusing its power.
II.
Who made the report? Who are these individuals? Who sanctioned the report? Where are their sources referenced/cited? They are elected and appointed government officials in the state of Missouri. There are no citations of the specific legal cases that document crimes that had definitely proven in a court of law under trial by jury that: a. what, if any, of the arrested suspects were CONVICTED in a court of law? I see a lot of, “arrested for”, and not much, “convicted of in case # _____” b. what appeals are underway? c. what cases offered any conclusive verdict that any elected official or candidate for office in any way perpetrated a crime or explicitly advocated its perpetration in explicitly worded detail?
III.
After mention of the three political figures, the report goes on to state: “Anti-Government Propaganda: Militia members commonly display picture, cartoons, bumper stickers that contain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this material will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforcement, and “The NewWorld Order” in a derogatory manor.”
The implications of these statements are grave and extraordinarily dangerous. I guarantee you that it isn’t just militia members who oppose or criticize these institutions. Perhaps you do. Where does this lead? That opens the door to any person who has openly stated opposition to, demonstrated against, criticized or even are litigating with any of these institutions in attempt to address legitimate grievances as potentially dangerous people. Call them militia and surveil them or harass them or infiltrate them and incite weak-minded undisciplined members to a real crime. Sounds like how the government helped derail the civil rights movement as one example.
This report and the members who made it, singling out an anonymous group of citizens only fuels the fire and arouses further suspicion of the government. It does so rightfully, for the implications of such highly politicized and targeted demonisation of citizens casts a long dark shadow over the prospects of justice for all of us.
I am not defending any group that perpetrates violent crimes. The reality of living in a free society that supports the rights of free-speech, peaceable assembly and the rest of our civil-rights along with the notions that all are innocent until proven guilty means that those rights and notions must be upheld for everyone. I don’t agree with any dogma – racist; political; religious. Everyone one has the right to free speech and is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. It must be defended in all cases.
Citing this sort of shoddy, “research”, is bad enough. Using it to make claims that even it’s authors dare not make to slander someone in an attempt at guilt by the weakest of association is astounding and scary. A very short leap would be to brand anyone who has spoken out or demonstrated against any of the groups they mention as suspects. People from across all walks of life, have spoken out against one, several or all of these groups. Can we not criticize our government or ideas without becoming suspects who are called a violent danger to society?
I am thankful that the great majority of Americans would not stoop to such decrepit levels of deception or if they were tempted to, will quickly stand back upright after a moment of close and sincere introspection and informative inspection. Sadly, the majority of the minority of Americans who hold and wield power in this nation are only to happy to have blind partisans like you at their service so they don’t have to be so brazen in their methods. They have eager tools like you to do it for them.
There are many fine so-called liberals and conservatives, people like Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Napolitano and citizens from all walks of life, who dedicate their lives to non-violent critique of the state and ideas at large, and who advocate that civil rights and liberties must be upheld. These are people who I am certain would readily denounce this report and fools like you who take it as bait to slander in hopes it will serve your partisan interest. You don’t shame their name, only yours.
Hopefully you are merely an impotent blogger, and not someone in a position of power or authority who can do real harm with your warped way of serving your perceived self-interest. Thankfully, people like Mr. Greenwald, Judge Napolitano and yes, Ron Paul, are putting their reputations and even their lives on the line to protect you from people just like, well, you.

“He’s a lovely man but when he talks like that he just sounds like some kind of hippie Uncle Remus and I have to lower my horned head and knock him down.”
I’ll be damned. From the mouths of babes. I guess we know for sure who’s playing the part of the devil now…

No, I think that would be great! I would beat him over the head with Daikon radishes the size of forearms, and whip him with thorny blackberry canes, until I subdued my foe, and he lay prostrate before me, crying ‘Uncle!’…or ‘Uncle Remus!’ perhaps.
Of course, he would probably just shoot me before I got to any of that.

I think if you were working the soil all day you could get him with the hippie armpit before he could pull out his firearm. The smell would make him pass out, or at least make his eyes water so he couldn’t shoot straight. My money is on you Tripp.
Peace out.

It doesn’t take a year or two to work out what’s wrong with your position. Jesus. Talk about vanity. You libertarians. How long do you think it takes to absorb an essay by von Mises? Two years? First, I have to get something out of the way: Shut up! That’s what a lot of people are saying now that yesteryear’s deregulated financial system has hit the wall.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you’ll come up with some excuse about why that happened. I’m not expecting anything else. If people started being honest, the world would come to a shuddering halt.
The part that intrigues me is, why do you care about Ron Paul? He’s a politician. Why do you, as a libertarian, support a politician? Any politician? Aren’t you, as a libertarian, anti-authoritarian? Aren’t you, if you’ve read and understood Murray Rothbard, anti-state?
See, the way I see it, libertarianism is irrelevant and impotent. It carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. People who lean to the right absolutely cannot resist looking to hierarchical (preferably long-established) powers to effect their admission into the corridors of power or, failing that, the adoption of at least some of their ideas. All their energies are focused on wining and dining people in the beltway who can help them them or, realistically speaking, promise to help them.
One of these days, any day now, I’m going to meet a libertarian who has become an anarchist because he finally gets it. He finally gets that he’s on his own. In fact, any principled person is on their own. I know, it doesn’t seem like that at first, because there are a lot of moralists who like nuzzling together like sheep, but, in the final analysis, if your abiding principle is that each man should be left alone (along with his vices) to pursue his own happiness, you will find that you have few friends. So I guess the question is: how many sheep do you know?

What if anyone who voted for or put a Dennis Kucinich or Obama bumper sticker walked around with guns or criticized government institutions and policies or even committed violent crimes? Certainly some must.

No, not certainly. That is my whole point. Ron Paul inspires domestic terrorists. I named specific names and gave the dates and specified the types of weapons being carried by persons associated with the Ron Paul movement.
You cannot do the same for Dennis Kucinich or Obama simply because they are not spouting anti-government rhetoric that inspires violence.

Martin,
I encourage you to go back and read my writings, particularly from last week if you haven’t already. They are many and they are long, but you may clear up some of your misunderstandings or assumptions about me if you do. I will take up less space commenting as well.
Why would anyone create a dogma like, “I dislike this person because they are a politician?” Or, “All politicians are evil and an authority.” ??? That doesn’t make any sense. It seems quite foolish to box oneself in to such a position. Politicians are in positions of power that are easily abused. Even while most do abuse to some extent or another, not all do.
Who is to say that Ron Paul is my authority? He has the potential to be if he chooses to abuse his power, and enough people choose to allow him to. The answer is to have a spine, and assume that no politician is an authority. In our system they are representatives. Ron Paul seems to be the only guy I am aware of who is saying he isn’t so arrogant as to want to be or pretend to know enough to be in a position of authority on all matters.
I don’t support Ron Paul per se. I support the policy positions and some of the ideology he supports. (Again, see my writings from last week if you haven’t already). I even in my writings from last week discuss issues in which I am disagreement with him. So, he isn’t my authority. I agree with some of his ideas, until I don’t. By all means let’s let some good ideas affect our society for the better. It is a very different dynamic than partisans who stand behind, “My

“I’m not sure I want a Heaven without Dogs – surely one of God’s greatest gifts to man.”
My dog died Sunday morning. Had him from a pup sixteen years. I was in another state. My wife was planning on going into town that day, but asked my son to come out and help bury him, so she stayed home. That was the day they had forty car pileups [3] in KC. I call it providence. A Great gift, coming and going.
Aesthetics, I dunno. But I think they appreciate things we aren’t even aware of yet.

You clearly missed the points. At least you are consistent.
Well, there we have it straight from the all omnipotent, omniscient Lord Asoka. Our Lord and Emperor the unparalleled, universal clairvoyant Asoka can vouch for the intentions, whereabouts, state of armament, politician voted for, criminal activities, (and record), of at least 70 million Americans.
You’ve gone out on some pretty thin limbs Your Highness, but this one is leafless, and ready to snap at any moment. Pssstt! Sir. Um err um… Your Highness. Um I mean Lord God Asoka, you are naked, Your … Highness?
(Heard from below the mountain where Lord God Asoka is currently located. “Dad? Why is that man with the wreath of leaves around his head and telescope in his hands up on that limb and naked? What is he doing with that tin foil? I hope he puts some around his loin. Good god almight! What is that? It looks like a wad of old flavorless Bubble Yum?!?!?”)

“Cut spending, retract government before we end up Greeced”
We ARE Greeced. The only difference is Greece can’t print reserve currency, and the U.S. Gov’t can. Which only means we’re climbing out further on a limb… WHich means the crash will be more assured. I second your call to action to dump all encumbents, but how can we be sure the replacements will be any different?

Hang on. It’s over when the Euro’s do the “test to end all tests” in 2012 and fire up the large Hadron Collider. A lot more is going to go dark thank just the lights in Europe and Western Asia. When their Big Bang Plasma experiment goes awry, the herd on this planet will be sufficiently thinned to provide for isolated survivorship.

Please, irregardless of what you write about being the most intelligent rant on earth or a complete waste, PLEASE write more succinctly like they teach in High School. So much of what you write is muddled in pure drivel and incoherent claptrap.
Example right at the beginning:
“where grown men compete for gold by riding things that look like cafeteria trays down icy mountainsides”
Not all are men, and certainly those “things” do not look like cafeteria trays and they are not icy mountainsides either.
Please learn how to write using analogies which are accurate and paint a true description of what you are trying to say, instead of just trying to make yourself “sound” impressive.
And for God’s sake, your points can be made using FAR LESS verbage than you use now.

What do you mean? The Health Care Plan is going to save us money. The proof? They said so! You see, the way it works is, there is always just more money, and the good guys, the ones who I voted for, they actually care about me and about us. They said so. Therefore, they are going to make sure that I and us are taken care of.
Just kidding of course. So nice to see somebody who isn’t checked into the Magical Land of Pretend Believe at 123 Partisan Place. You and Diogen seem legitimately informed, concerned and appropriately alarmed.
This problem, (the US and global sovereign debt problem), has the feel of one of those engineering or math problems where the traditional means of solution are no longer feasible. A radical new approach to restating the problem and/or the solution may be necessary.
I often feel like this may be the point where political solutions may not arrive in time or with sufficient numerical force to make a difference. In other words, it may be that looking to get out is the answer that replaces finding an answer to how we solve/manage the problems here. )At least until or if it is safe/wise to come back.)
Getting out monetarily, at least partially, is obvious and relatively easy to do. Then there is the issue of getting out physically. Do either of you know anything about any potential devils less devilish than the devils we know about here in good old USA?
For your amusement check out Northern Europe’s claims to fame:cnbc.com/id/30308959
Obviously the rampant inability of significant numbers in this forum to do little more than read and slap about labels hasn’t encouraged me about our prospects of collective self-resolution or effect self-management of our nation’s problems.

I especially appreciated comments by Trav777 and Cash today. Being of a “somewhat liberal/progressive” bent for as many years as I was of the opposite bent, I’m sorry to see large-scale socialism foundering, along with entreprenurial capitalism. It really would be lovely if the “Kumbayah Singers” way of life really added up to a workable system – sharing and all that. Just as it would be nice if the “Miltonian” (Freidman) models of economics were actually sustainable on a finite planet. Alas, both ideologies have just about limited out, now. Once again, it seems to me that large brains and opposable thumbs do not mix well, in the long run, with matches and gasoline. Gardening’s good, but nigh on 7 billion of us trying to scratch out enough to feed ourselves that way, won’t stretch out our run very long either. One way or another – a bunch of naked apes are going to be pink-slipped, “early”, before the turn of the next century. No amount of “politics”, “economics”, or “technologics” is going to unwind the overload, or stop nature’s reconciliation. Thermodynamic laws are still in effect in my neighborhood, I believe.
But, this please: Can someone please explain to me, as JHK suggests – Why would Tehran care to lob missiles into either Frankfort or Lyons? Was there something I missed about Tehran’s relations with these other two cities? I can’t say I tracked with the Rabbi Kunstler, very well, in this week’s post.
I’d appreciate anyone’s tutelage on this. Thanks.

Hi Mean Dovey Cooledge, I agree with you that people will come up with their own methods of dealing with future events. In my own case, I have lived by planning for the worst and hoping for the best. It has worked pretty well for me for 64 years, and I’m not gonna change now. Regards to you

DT –
Nice to see another voice of reason/reality, and understanding of the inevitable economic/ecological reckoning.
I too can’t make heads or tails of JHK’s Tehran nuking Europe narrative.
It makes no sense for Tehran to send nukes toward any US ally. It would be annihilated by subsets of the Israeli, English, French and US’ nuclear arsenals immediately. It makes absolutely no sense. The crazy leader narrative even makes no sense. (See Kim Jong Il for example of an egomaniac who isn’t too crazy to know that his weapons are merely a deterrent from invasion not a forward offensive weapon that would ensure his instant annihilation.)
If anything, at this point Iran having nuclear weapon may deter any further potential US/Israeli shenanigans in the Middle East regarding Iran at least.
So, yes, not that I want one more black swans to have to legitimately worry about, but I’m with you. Any enlightenment about this being even a distinct and realistic/plausible possibility would be appreciated. (IOW: Does Iran even have a nuclear device much mess long-range delivery systems?)

A fine post, as usual.
Some of this news is about 180 years old, however. Greece has been in bankruptcy (or close to it) ever since it became recognized as a state in 1832. For the rest of that century, the entire finances of the state were under French administration. After the ruinous war with Turkey in 1897, Greek resources and revenue were wholly under the control of other European powers for another extended period. The twentieth century has not been much better for them than the nineteenth.
Greece has not yet rendered any other countries insolvent, and I do not believe it will now. The Euro has many problems, but I think Greece is overblown as a threat. (In many respects, solvency is simply a collective state of mind, that is, fiat money is issued based on confidence in the state. While one may have grave doubts about the Euro, enough people value it that is, in fact, valuable.)

It would seem the pertinent analysis would look to whether it will be “bad paper itself” or a government’s attempts to obscure it through misdeeds that usher in the global “reckoning.”
The paper can’t continue to represent non-existent value for many more quarters. It all eventually comes “due.”

Obama’s the Recovery Act is working. If you want to see the proof look at this job loss graph:my.barackobama.com/page/content/recoveryanniversary/
That is change we can believe in.
Obama’s recovery act cushioned the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and lay a new foundation for economic growth.
* According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Recovery Act is already responsible for as many as 2.4 million jobs through the end of 2009
* As a result, job losses are a fraction of what they were a year ago, before the Recovery Act began
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
* Cut taxes for 95 percent of working families through the Making Work Pay tax credit
* Cut taxes for small businesses
* Provided loans to over 42,000 small businesses
* Funded over 12,500 transportation construction projects nationwide, ranging from highway construction to airport improvement projects
* Made multi-billion dollar investments in innovation, science and technology that are laying the foundation for our 21st century economy
* Provided critical relief for state governments facing record budget shortfalls, including help to prevent cuts to Medicaid and creating or saving over 300,000 education jobsEconomists on the left and the right have stated that the Recovery Act has helped avert an even worse economic disaster.
Take that, CFN doomsters!my.barackobama.com/page/content/recoveryanniversary/
Sorry. The actual economic facts fit neither your disaster narrative nor your economic collapse fantasies. Zero inflation is what we have. (Less than zero for 2009 according to the Current Consumer Price Index published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).)
My only criticism is Obama has not spent enough or printed enough money.

Jim,
You are such a cynical and talented poet! Your blog entries make me laugh so hard and all the while crying at the predicament we are facing.
Me thinks you are a ‘glass half empty’ person, but who could rightly criticize you for that when the glass, whether half empty or half full, lies in the shadow of a giant anvil at the end of a frayed rope?

Comment regarding previous post:
My understanding is that when the Federal government creates jobs, gains are offset by debt. At present, Federally created jobs costs between one hundred to over two hundred thousand at the outset. Such jobs represent a huge -net- loss economically; that they are actually helping the economy is an illusion (or delusion). The loss is not readily apparent because of the less than instantaneous velocity of money and because such debts are so widely disbursed. To me, governments would do best by refraining from attempts at engineering economic prosperity, excepting perhaps the important role they can play with regard to regulation and enforcement, which is an important role and responsibility that the current government has not so surreptitiously crept out from under.

The struggling Greek economy may get a boost from oil and gas pipeline projects with Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Greek counterpart said Tuesday, signaling a new urgency for the projects to start up.
Moscow and Athens vowed to achieve progress with the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline in the near future, even as Bulgaria, another partner in the plan, has suspended its participation for additional scrutiny.
Tuesday’s statements showed that Russia still counted on building the Balkan line despite being discouraged by Bulgaria, which prompted the government in Moscow to seek joining an alternative pipeline, through Turkey.
“We have a mutual desire to do so,” Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said at a joint news conference with Putin after they held talks. “I don’t see any major obstacles for us to move on more dynamically.”
The pipeline — from Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast to Greece’s Aegean Sea coast — would take oil around the dangerously congested Bosporus straits. –The Moscow Times, Feb.17,2010

Skler,
I share the same understanding of government as a wealth destruction engine, and the delusion of government job creation. That delusion pales in comparison to the delusion of claiming that N number of jobs were saved. You can’t measure how many jobs are not lost.
There is no greater destruction of wealth than military spending. Resources are taken away from the productive economy at all levels, (industrial commodities from metals to plastics, science and research, ) driving their costs up harming the ability of what remains of the private sector to compete. That doesn’t even account opportunity cost of what those resources could do for productive means, loss of productive life or capacity due to death or injury, the egregious fraud and waste of the contract, “process” etcetera.
Guess what that means for the current administrations record military spending? It, like job creation programs are making us worse off and destroying our nation more than at any time in our nation’s history.
In terms of the statistics and data the government publishes there are two things to note. The first is, they tend to publish a number and then in 2-4 months go back and quietly revise it, where revision means stripping the pig of its lipstick.
Secondly a lot of the data is heavily massaged and manipulated to paint a misleading picture. John Williams and his economists over at, http://www.shadowstats.org explain in great detail how those distortions work. He even provides alternative, real data, by using the accounting methods from before the Reagan/Greenspan and Clinton/Greenspan team began using what are essentially fraudulent accounting methods as a matter of practice.
In terms of the inflation vs. deflation scenario, the verdict is still out. It may not be over for 2 or 5 or 10 years. There are a lot of variables. There are a lot of very smart people debating the issue – all making good points. Only time will tell.
Neither scenario is a good one. Though deflation will at least allow the prudent to preserve some of their hard-earned savings, and force the bankrupt into the bankruptcy they deserve, and their lenders to write off their irresponsible loans. The government as the most irresponsible of all of the lenders and spenders is doing everything it can to avoid the deflationary outcome.
That indicates that they will perhaps ensure a multi-year if not generational lurching back and forth between violent episodes of deflation to violent episodes of inflation.

In any case, there will be far fewer people on the government dole and/or a far smaller dole as this grinds on – except of course for the military.
Any citizen who is cheering the government on through this process is a cheerleader for our military empire and our financial destruction.

Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that [Obama’s Recovery Act] bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.
Yet I’m guessing you don’t think of the stimulus bill as a big success.
…
Yet the jobless rate is now expected to begin falling consistently by the end of this year.
For that, the stimulus package, flaws and all, deserves a big heaping of credit. “It prevented things from getting much worse than they otherwise would have been,” Nariman Behravesh, Global Insight’s chief economist, says. “I think everyone would have to acknowledge that’s a good thing.”

Moodys is a Bond Rating agency. They are the folks who were rating all of the now-worthless derivatives as AAA through the whole real-estate scam.
Marc Faber, who predicted the real estate bubble for years and is one of the world’s most successful individual investors and a renowned independent economist, recently confronted a Moodys economist saying that if Moody’s held US bonds to the same standards as other nations they should be rated CCC.
Faber asked the Moody’s shill why they are not rating US bonds like our debt-to-GDP should have them rated. The Moody’s rep declined to answer, saying perhaps they needed to re-assess the US debt situation.
I think their activities facilitating the fraud of the real estate scam might provide a clue as to why they over-rate certain sovereign’s bonds and why they promote the benefits of certain sovereign’s, “economic recovery”, programs.
I’m the Chief Economics Officer at a firm called Global Institute for Economics, and I’ve got something I want to sell you. Call 1-800-PIP-EDRM.
Any citizen who is cheering on the oligarchy and its accomplices in private and governmental institutions through this process is a cheerleader for our military empire and our financial destruction.

I agree with you and Cuddle that gov’t attempts at job creation not only does not create jobs, it destroys jobs. In Canada we had a generation of gov’t deficits on the rationale that these deficits were stimulative. They were not.
But, like long hair, deficit financing was fashionable, au courant, everyone that was with it and modern wouldn’t dream of any other way.
Mainstream thinking, as expressed by a prime minister of the time, was that zero deficits meant zero jobs and zero hope. I expect that the thinking was the same in the US.
Gradually though, thanks to a few lonely and much derided politicians and pundits, the common sense idea took root that gov’ts needed to get back in the black. So main stream politicians, being worthless two bit whores, noticed the change in public mood and joined the parade. Govts got rid of their deficits in the 1990s.
Now this is the good part: We went from being a high unemployment, high inflation, high deficit country to low unemployment, low inflation, zero deficits.
So a tip of the hat to Manning, Klein, Day, Dinning, Gray and others, you are heroes. These good people had cojones like bowling balls, they were at the forefront, they pushed to fix govt finances when times were bad. They were laughed at, slandered as right wing, nut case extremists. But they stuck to their guns. Outside the country they are unknown, at home what they did is being forgotten.
So now, politicians never let well enough alone. Because of the financial crisis, which by the way never really did much damage here, they pumped up spending so we now have colossal gov’t deficits.
WTF?
BTW you in the USA have on the side of the angels someone named Brooksley Born, the former head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. I saw a program about her on Frontline. She pushed long ago to regulate the trade of derivatives. The big swinging dicks on Wall Street, the Fed (Greenspan)and Treasury (Rubin) shut her down. Too bad, she had quality, she was a real Marine.

“In your opinion, what would you recommend a citizen do about the “oligarchy,” given the last nine years experience of perpetual war?”
Tell them {and those that worship them} the truth {like Ron Paul does} and pray for their repentance {change of mind}.youtube.com/watch?v=DGV1ZLj-noE&feature=player_embedded

Mainstream thinking, as expressed by a prime minister of the time, was that zero deficits meant zero jobs and zero hope. I expect that the thinking was the same in the US.

Mainstream thinking here, since Ronald Reagan, has been to increase defense spending, deficits be damned, bust up the unions, de-regulate the financial institutions, embrace the free market and ship jobs out of the USA. After almost thirty years of that kind of conservative economic capitalist thinking the USA was on the brink of a depression.
So Obama arrives and spends more and increases the deficits. People scream it won’t work. Deficits are the problem. More deficits won’t work. Yet the evidence is that Obama’s Economic Recovery Act of 2009 did work and is working.my.barackobama.com/page/content/recoveryanniversary/
The above link is to a job loss graph that is not at all hard to understand. Click on it.

Stimulating Hypocrisy: 111 Lawmakers Block Recovery While Taking Credit For Its Successthinkprogress.org/touting-recovery-opposed/
Yep, that’s 111 lawmakers who voted against the stimulus package who are now taking credit for its success.
Seems to be bipartisan agreement on the success of Obama’s economic stimulus… at public groundbreaking or ribbon cutting ceremonies.

Sorry about your dog. I’ve taken care of budgies since I was very small (I hesitate to say “owned” because I don’t know if the one who picks up droppings is really the “owner”) and I know what you mean about unique animal consciousness. An amazing thing, even such small creatures like budgies can have such complex, unique personalities. A great gift for sure, nothing like the friendship of an animal.

go back and study the history of our empire and you’ll find that it doesn’t begin 9 years ago. ample writers from all across the, “political spectrum”, have been documenting it’s ongoing activities under both wings of the War Party.
Read the Chalmers Johnson trilogy: “Blowback”; “The Sorrows of Empire”; “Nemesis”. Read, “All the Shah’s Men.” Read Ron Paul’s, “End The Fed.” Read the accounts of the civil war and Abraham Lincoln by Tom di Lorenzo. Understand the writings of Admiral Mahan and his throughline from Lincoln through well guys like McChrystal and Petraeus.
Other writers who document the empire are: Vidal; Zinn; Chomsky; Raimondo; Eland; Greenwald; the guys at TomDispatch. These name but a few from a diverse pool of political perspectives.
In short, drop the pom-poms, grab some books and read them with an open mind. Then re-read them with an open mind. Repeat over and over until you never feel the urge to grab the pom-poms again other than to throw them in the trash bin of history once and for all.
If you can’t drop the pom-poms, pray – a lot. Pray for the good folks who are withstanding political bigotry and zealotry to stand up to the oligarchs and wrest the country back into the hands of the people, and that you don’t drive them to just give up and leave you and the rest of the partisans to rot in the hellish trash bin they are creating for us all.

Asoka,
You’re imputing stuff into my comments that I never said.
Believe me, I’m no defender of Wall Street, to me there’s no banker like a jailed banker.
Note what I said about Brooksley Born who advocated regulation of derivatives. Brooksley was right, the big swinging dicks that lined up to oppose her were wrong, wrong, wrong.
IMO, the grotesque, snarling, nightmarish homunculi that populate Wall Street firms need to be collared and leashed and regulated with laws heavily larded with terms like “no”, “not”, “never”, “forbidden”, “penalty”,”imprisonment” that are clear and simple.
These ravenous, mindless, economy destroying horrors cannot control themselves and they need deep clear radioactive lines as boundaries.
Plus, to me, this business model of exporting productive capacity to China is a dog that don’t hunt, never did, never will so don’t pin me as a supporter of that particular lunacy.
My comments were just on the efficacy of stimulative deficits. We have a generation’s worth of evidence that says they do not bloody work. No pie in the sky ideology here, this is reality based. Our economy was far better off after the deficits were gone.
But look at the bright side. The industrial half of the US military/industrial complex relocated to China so is now on Chinese soil, under Chinese control. As a result, the military half no longer has economic support to sustain itself in the form of funds generated by long departed industry.
The US military is now in the absurd position of being economically supported by its main rival, the Chinese by means of loans via Chinese purchases of US govt securities. Guaranteed this won’t go on. Either the US military starts taking orders from its paymasters in China, which I can’t see, or the US military is finished as a global force which I think is more likely and is something I think you would be happy about. Or am I imputing something YOU didn’t say?

cuddletuffy, thank you for the reading list (and for assuming I know how to read).
I will try to get some of them from the public library and read them.

Pray for the good folks who are withstanding political bigotry and zealotry to stand up to the oligarchs and wrest the country back into the hands of the people, and that you don’t drive them to just give up and leave you and the rest of the partisans to rot in the hellish trash bin they are creating for us all.

Are these the Tea Party folks, or the Ron Paul supporters, or the Lyndon LaRouche supporters, or the white nationalists? It’s all so confusing. They all seem to be anti-government in some way.
Again, I really appreciate your reading list. Thank you.

‘My only criticism is Obama has not spent enough or printed enough money’
Hey wymar joe…read my post above this. the chinese are more schrewd/ ruthless than us.
their money talks.
you sound like krugman! maybe the la times ill hire you.

Dear City Fellers (Nickelthrower), I come down off the mountain to start up my swimming pool business in Bucks county and I finded out that I don’t haf to worry bout youse fellers in my patch. Why yuo dumm summbitches cant even figger out what to do with snow. Try shoveling it you stupid bastard. I hope you freeze waitng for the governments’ help when all you have to do is some actual labor. I can’t wait until you know-it-alls lose the use of all your electronics. In the words of one of our thirty-something hipsters: “maps are so yesterday”. You dipshits couldn’t find your way home from the mall without your GPS.

A CASE STUDY IN THE LONG EMERGENCY
In an effort at full disclosure, I want to admit up-front that I am trying to steer this week’s discourse away from ‘who messed up?’, and toward ‘what do we do now?’ But I have a very serious issue to present as a case study intended to stoke that fire.
My own. In 2007 my wife of then 5 years and I were making pretty reasonable money between us. We had a cute little cottage on an acre of lakefront property in north-central Florida, a hefty mortgage, a payment on an SUV, a small organic garden, a great dog, and no children.
Today, in early 2010, we have a two year old girl, a baby boy on the way, one underemployment, no dog, and are staring down the barrel of some pretty tough decisions. To be honest, the initial movement from there to here was not our choice, but as we’ve been presented with new information and new ways of thinking, we have increasingly made conscious decisions to move our involvement away from the formal economy, and toward a healthy household economy.
I now believe the two to be mutually exclusive.
Our credit is shot, we are in the process of declaring bankruptcy, and the house we’ve been in for the last two years is about to be reoccupied by its owner, with whom we’ve traded our time and labor in repairs for rent.
So what now? We have no interest in fighting for unlikely jobs, doing something we don’t approve of most likely. We don’t own any property. And we have about $8000 to our name.
Instead of asking for suggestions, I’m going to tell you what we’re doing, and then ask for comments.
1) Moving back home, across the country to Georgia, to be closer to the bulk of supportive family. Our “tribe” if you will.
2) Buying a crummy house in a crummy neighborhood instead of renting.
3) Giving the full middle finger salute to the powers that be.
4) Increasing our self-reliance and withdrawal from the corporate economy.
5) Converting our little herb and soap business into a non-profit 501(c)3, in an effort to promote the availability of healthy food choices in low-income neighborhoods (food deserts).
In this case, our own. In a nutshell we want to get the house thing taken care of before hyperinflation, convert whatever piddly unemployment income we’re getting into a permacultural food forest, and turn the ghetto into a lush green oasis of self-reliance. There is lots of grant money floating for relocalization projects, and my background is in science and grant-writing anyway.
So I welcome any commentary on the above-outlined plan. Dovey, Wage, Diogen, Asoka, Cash, Vlad, Workingman, Mr. Purple, whoever, feel free to chime in. Cuddles, if you join in, please limit your response to one page;) It seems like most of the chatter on this blog is about some big event in the future, or some blame in the past, and I want to bring this thing into the present. This is happening to real, halfway intelligent people, right now.
What would you do?

Sounds like a plan, but I can spot some snags.
First of all, your crummy house in a crummy nabe will have to be very cheap, because you will not get financed within two years of declaring bankruptcy. And it might be more difficult now that credit is so tight and will remain so for sometime. Will your house be cheap enough to buy outright for less than $8K inclusive of closing costs?
Will it be close to public transit? How about a grocery store or hardware store where you can obtain the tools you need to do absolutely everything yourself? It might be good to stockpile seed and basic food staples before you do all this.
Getting your house taken care of before hyperinflation is a good idea if at all possible. If you have skills and physical strength (which I myself absolutely lack)you might be better off going buying a lot just outside a small town, somewhere where zoning and building codes are lax, and building yourself.
Will you home-school your kids, or send them to the local public school packed with kids from some of the worst-kept homes in town?

Sorry to hear of your plight, but I can’t offer you any suggestions, just tell you what we have done:
As you may know, I have posted quite a few times about how I feel regarding seeing the bow of the US Titanic dipping below the water line, while those on the poop deck debated hording spam & ammo, or growing thier own food in a dingy.
It was our decision to abandon the ship before it was too late, so more than 5 years ago we started researching other places to live, outside the US.
In the end, we decided on Costa Rica, but due to various delays, were unable to make the move until this year.
So, now that we have ‘cashed-out’ of the US e-
Conomy, made our move, we feel that we made the right choice. Sure, things are a lot different here, but that is what we expected, it will be very challenging, but I feel that we can do it, we made the only choice we could.
So again, I feel sorry for you, and I really do hope to God or the Easter Bunny (Bless Him In All His Chocolaty Goodness)that the Mad Macs(hee-hee) scenario doesn’t happen, for the sake of folks like you. But if it does, well cest’ la vie.
Best of luck to you.
P.S. Well, it looks like JHK finally and permanently banned the mommy-thing.
Thank god – In All His Chocolaty Goodness!
DJ

Trippticket
Keep your chin up, we all learn from the tough times. The higher power is always there for you.
Moving close to a supportive family is good move.
I wouldn’t be to quick to buy a home just yet.
Prices of homes won’t be going up anytime soon, and renting might be the best option. Maybe a muli-family where you could act as a property mananger of sorts for an owner. Be open to unconventional solutions.
Turn your love of gardening into a little business that can help you,your family, and others who buy from you. You obviously have a passion for it, and other people will see that and
it will make you happy.

Tripp,
Sounds like a plan, but I would move sooner than later. Maybe your wife doesn’t want to move before Li’l Trippster arrives, which I totally get, but you’ve got to start laying the network out.
Have you thought of giving permaculture workshops online? You have certainly inspired me and you’d be “following your bliss”.

Thank YOU! for redirecting the conversation. theres a ton of wisdom in this forum and i would much rather read how individuals plan to live in the new economy than discuss yet again how we have been royally had by the PTB’s
as i mentioned to you via email – a business that helps people transition out of their lawns and into a workable food plot -sort of the new victory garden – is perfect for you. i was very excited by just the little bit of permaculture you suggested for me. i know you can sell this and there is plenty of money being spent out there still; especially smart forward-thinking money.
lets say you are paid whatever amount to transform the yard, then you could have packages and add ons. for instance, your clients could sign up for a monthly visit and training. maybe you could throw in some seeds or plants. once you get them up and running they will sing your praises and you’ll get new clients.
i am going to send you a link to a great low income community garden in ATL that is offering classes and is doing great along with the link to the people raising heritage north american turkeys – their waiting list for thanksgiving is two years.
in some ways, this is a very exciting time. because instead of looking for a job, you create the job. you find the need and you fill it. and your knowledge base is gold right now.
i want to think that in this time, or time to come, people will find their strength and humanity. in a way, im glad credit is difficult. now people can be real. its no big thing to say “i cant afford that” – it is actually quite liberating. also liberating: not being a prisoner to some phony and narrow definition of what is a successful life. your attitude and self reliance will attract the right people to you. i know that you will work it out in your new home, and am glad that you’ll have your family. after talking with you, i really am not too worried. you’ll be fine – better than fine i bet.
if there is one thing i truly believe in, it is that creativity will be our salvation.

Thanks guys, for the comments so far. In order of questions, Laura, yes, we can actually move across the country, buy the house we’re looking at in cash, and close for $8000. If you can believe that. My family has also offered some financial support to help get it done. The house needs a lot of work, but it beats living under a bridge.
Public transit I’m not sure about, but we have a reliable car for the moment. Close enough to hardware and grocery, both very necessary for a while, especially while fixing up the house and getting the garden established. I’m also pretty well versed in some fairly radical alternative building methodologies, and view a crummy neighborhood as a place where codes enforcement doesn’t go.
I have a bigger cache of seeds, staples, and hand tools than anyone I know, and I can grow rootstock and graft scionwood too. And we will home-school our children, yes.
Dee, sometimes I wish I could just hop off to Costa Rica, but I think “tribing up” has won the debate. I do admire what you’ve done though. There is a great permaculture teaching site in Belize, run by one of the best hands-on tropical practitioners in the game. See link below:mmrfbz.org/Welcome_to_Maya_Mountain_Research_Farm.html
Workingman, thanks for the input. The house we’re buying is $4000, so I suppose I could wait for better homes to fall in price, and rent for a while, but it’s hard to imagine doing much better than 4 grand before hyperinflation puts the world out of reach for a while. And this place has a 1/3 acre lot like your place; I think you’d be surprised by how much food I can grow on 1/3 of an acre. As for a gardening business, already done! I build ecological gardens for a living these days, and am working on a new grant for expanding those efforts into more philanthropic endeavors. I do very much have a passion for it!
Semper Infidel, love your handle, and yes, we are moving sooner rather than later. Next month, and the baby is due end of June. I need to get there and get some seeds in the ground ASAP. As soon as I’m credentialed enough in the permaculture community to teach I definitely will. Kind of an apprentice program it is, and I’m only just over a year into my practice. I tell you though, I learned more about life and nature in 2009 than in 4 years studying biology at the University of Florida. It’s an amazing journey.
You can’t imagine the smile on my face when someone tells me I’ve been a positive influence on them for permaculture! I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Tripp, sounds like the right track, except #5. Forming a 501(c)3 will eat up a healthy chunk of your $8000, tie you into the Feds and the state tax people, and wrap you in paperwork/accountants/lawyers forever. I’d stay off-grid — cash/barter (yes, I know cash or barter is taxable, but that’s your business). You can hope they have bigger fish to fry.
Good luck.

Tripp,
I am sorry to hear about your plight, but encouraged to hear that you are facing and embracing the new opportunity.
I’m not one for offering this kind of personal advice even to people I know really well.
Being close to family if they are supportive and loving and relatively sane sounds like a great idea.
Buying a crummy house in a crummy neighborhood is an extremely bad idea. Gotta keep this brief, so I’ll say no more.
Other than, best wishes and may you and your family continue to continue the many blessings of true happiness.

Trip, check out http://www.bluerockstation.com
I know these folks, and they’re making a living AND having a blast outside of the formal economy. Their land is quite a bit more than 1/3 acre, but perhaps you’ll get some ideas. Very sorry to hear about your plight, but it sounds like you are young and full of energy, and you like living low on the food chain. The other folks had good thoughts, I’ll add one: is there a public library nearby to where you can walk or bike? If not, perhaps you could start a lending library in some sort of donated space with donated materials — nothing beats a library for a community gathering spot. Perhaps you could learn how to fix bikes? Evangelizing lawn-to-gardens may not pay in real income to start with, but perhaps in time this could become an income stream. Teaching people how to collect and purify rainwater, perhaps helping them install rain barrels could bring in some income. If you could combine your 1/3 acre with your neighbors lots, it could become a huge garden. Crummy house is OK, you’ll fix it up over the years, but evaluate the crummy neighborhood carefully, will you and your family be safe? Will the neighbors be receptive to an alternative family in their midst, do you know any of them?
I’ll be off for 3 weeks away from civilization, look forward to reading up on how your plans develop when I get back. Best of luck.
Another idea — good quality European-style baking. We’re paying $3 a piece for fresh Croissants at the local French bakery, more for various crusty European-style breads, and they sell out every day. Their flatbreads are to die for.

Tripp, trust your instincts. You’ve got a good head and a good heart and your plan sounds good to me. I got family in the rust belt midwest and there are houses there for sale for less than $8,000. I don’t know what Georgia is like, but being close to your tribe will be a definite advantage. Best of luck on your new life chapter.
Georgia, Georgia,
The whole day through
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind
I’m say Georgia
Georgia
A song of you
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines
Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you
I said Georgia,
Ooh Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

I spent some time with Rothbard at his New York apartment with friends in 1964 I think it was in the summer.
No he didn’t support voting but he didn’t forbid it either, or tell anyone not to vote. Goldwater was going to run in November, remember?
He lived in a rent controlled apartment and I asked him about that. He said to use everything the government provided to weaken it and use it against itself. That surprised me.
I heard Von Mises as thed keynote speaker in the first huge celebration meeting of the YAF (Young Americans for Freedom) and of course at the time I loved him.
The libertarians then were really interesting people. Some were very ambitious.
Rothbard disliked Rand and the Randians as he called them. When I asked why he told me, and I was disenchanted with Rand from then on, although not completely. There are pearls in objectivism dogma that are very practical at difficult time choice points. Just different feedback you can give yourself before you choose.
Since studying Foucault method of historical genealogy everything as shifted 180 degrees. The facts are often the same, but the Order of Things is different so my perception is different. I can now see a lot of things from the right wing perspective as well and it helps to understand their fervor.

I don’t think they are going to be able to squeezed one last inflationary cycle out of this mess. That means hyperinflation is not going to happen. If you have 8000 in cash, put it in hard money: physical gold is best if you know how to store it secretly. It will buy you that house you want when it if it finishes going up or on the way if you cash in early.
Find someone in Georgia who wants to share their property, trade or whatever. Someone with integrity. Put in your garden following Ruth Stouts no work gardening way or Fukuoka’s way.
Do not buy in a lousy neighborhood because those lousy neighbors will drive you mad and steal from you and perhaps worse.
I live in a small rural town and am looking for just the right person(s) who want to share my huge 8000 sq ft victorian building. There are more people like me. My back yard has been getting richer and richer for 5 years. I can walk to everything.
Make art. It survives. Use ebay. Find your niche there. Barter skills and goods. Shot at dumpsters or thrifts or yard sales.
And study Foucault.

He said to use everything the government provided to weaken it and use it against itself. That surprised me.

So, it was Rothbard who brought down the American government? (just kidding) I have been hearing the same thing from both extreme left and extreme right for 40 years… “to hasten the revolution” or “hasten the collapse” or some such rhetoric.
I still say we have another 47 years before TSHTF. As Cuddletuffy pointed out it’s good to take the long view when it comes to the decline of civilizations. Could very well be more than 47 years. I say 47 years because a Peak Oil report said that’s how long our oil supply will last.
Of course, with increased {price-related} demand destruction, and the substitution of alternative sources of energy (Obama is big on going the French route: nuclear), and any possible future supply increase due to discoveries or new extraction technologies, the oil we have could last much longer than 47 years.
This could, indeed, be a very long emergency, and may result in a soft landing, instead of a TSHTF scenario.

Dio, the bread idea is pretty good. I already keep a sourdough culture, and I’m a helluva breadman. Good crusty stuff. Been dying to build a cob oven too.
The lending library sounds good too. I have a damn decent book collection of my own that seems to always be missing more volumes than I’m reading. Could expand garden on those grounds as well. Doesn’t take too many diverse 1/3 acre plots to put together a whopper of a local food stream.
Will definitely check out that website! Have a good time on your hiatus. Thanks for the input.

Tripp,
Yep, sounds like a FUTURE in the making!
One small item? Crummy neighborhoods can be turned around when people feel the community that is there to be had in co-operative efforts. When you find opportunities to reach out with your indispensible knowledge, I’m sure you’ll become a valued “asset” to your neighbors. (Shit, sounds like “human resources”, doesn’t it? Always hated that…)
When people are “in the same boat” they tend to start rowing together. Showing your neighbors a way to deprive some of the parasites of a goodly portion of their hard-earned food dollars is going to be a large morale booster.
…And maybe (as Diogen suggested) some methodology for collecting rainwater from multiple rooftops for gravity-feed watering for multiple gardens, etc?
Wouldn’t put too much store in the reservoir and pumping systems in the not-too-distant future. Repurposed piping? Always check with your local destruction yard, and “ask around”. (Ya don’t ask, ya don’t get, eh? ;o) ) Mmmm, boy, Stone Soup!
The place may still look pretty crummy, but the reality of mutual preservation will give it a welcoming heart and a strong pride. This I predict, and [somehow] more than wish for you and yours.
Ps.- Thanks for the book recommendations. Man, I’ve got a LOT of work to do.

Yes I read “Collapse” too – a strange and poignant fate for the White Greenlanders. There is some evidence that they were finished off by the Innuit – signs of slaughter. And evidence that some of the Norse went over to the Innuit whether freely or as captives. If voluntary, a choice that saved their lives.
Now how should I apply this lesson? Apart from a few old Indians, none of the minorites have any special knowledge of wilderness survival or farming. But they sure will be ready to attack and plunder when things get bad. I guess that’s a skill I could learn from them. Or are you saying that I should stop seeing them as dirty as the Norse saw the fish? And that I should be ready to eat these dark skinned people?
Just like your last post about no minority violence, it just falls apart when thought about. You’re a smart guy but you’re just mouthing slogans without thinking. And as I’ve said before, Whites have transcended cannibalism except for atavistic individuals. The tropical races have not – as you will find out in the next decade.

Abbey, I don’t claim to be an economist, but I can’t see how printing trillions of dollars in funny money every year can have any effect other than serious inflation. I realize the fed note has been backed only by the perceived strength of the U.S. economy for over 40 years already, but that perception isn’t exactly improving these days. And with real growth over, that isn’t likely to change. Seems like a lethal combination for the dollar to me.
I’ve dabbled in precious metals for years, and have a little gold and silver not included in my cash total. I agree that it is really the only way to preserve capital strength, but TPTB sure seem to be deft at keeping it tied to the Dow. If it uncouples it’ll cause mass panic, and who knows what to expect then, so they obviously see that coupling as necessary to keep the peace. And I ain’t bettin’ against the fed’s powers of obfuscation.
Besides, gold is the epitome of the “small, concentrated, portable wealth” that invites theft. I’ve written before about future wealth being once again based on soil fertility and on the strength of our forests. Things that are hard to steal. These are always the limiting factors in societal collapses, not money. Makes me sound like a hippie freakshow I know, but I’m OK with that.
I’m already a follower of Ruth Stout and Masanobu Fukuoka. Good advice. A bit on Foucault to follow…

You ramble on a lot about Foucault and the “Dominant Discourse,” and while I’ve never read him, I’ve also never heard a peep about his ideas for adapting to energy descent.
Does he have any? Can you give me a synopsis? Because if he’s not lighting a pathway before us down the mountain, I don’t have much use for him. Sharp as he may be.
Thanks for your comments.

I can be both tough minded and tender minded. I’m tender minded when it comes to animals and old people and tough minded when it comes to Liberals, Communists, and their minority clients. I’m trying to learn to be both simultaneously so that one can temper the other in the moment – even if I only express one. I can sympathize with your feelings – this world will eat you alive if you’re vulnerable as I once was. But the metaphysic not so much. Somehow I haven’t lost ultimate faith…
And how many monkeys will it take to bang on typewriters to produce the Plays of Shakespeare? An infinite number banging away for infinite time. Believing in Meaning is more satisfying, rational, and more in keeping with what we know about evolution. You can’t prove no meaning anymore than you can meaning. But something seems to be speeding things along and roughly guideing.
Haven’t been able to find that reference about Pike giving the ADL a charter for Scottish Freemasonry. I did find an interesting connection in a book called “The Masonic Myth” by an Occult
scholar and Mason named Jay Kinney. He said that several Jews worked with Pike in the founding of the American Scottish Rite or at least one of its branches.
Can you reccomend any novelists who have written about Africa and race relations there? I’ve been reading Coatzee and I read Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” but I want more.

O3, my thoughts exactly…
I think there’s a good chance that crummy neighborhoods are a product of agrarian culture. Almost all of the cultures we know about are agrarian, so there’s little comparison available for us. But what I know about existing horticultural societies suggests that caste system hierarchies are not a part of their experience of the world. Typically there is a chief and/or shaman, but beyond that society is pretty flat, with easy access to leadership.
Not something we’ve ever enjoyed in agrarian culture.
So, in parallel to my thoughts on the physics of capitalism’s demise at the end of growth, I believe that agriculture will be subject to the same invisible hand of the market. It will go the way of Vaudeville because it requires growth and expansion to function. For the humans that make it through this, horticulture should be a natural go-to system.
How can an unsustainable system be superior to a sustainable one? Doesn’t pencil out, as Jim K might say. So this idea of “undesirables” in society is more a product of nurture than of nature to me.
I’m willing to take my chances. And, more importantly, so is my wife.
Definitely appreciate your .02

I’m not sure where I said to take the long view on civilization collapse, or quite what that even means.
I don’t agree w/ JHK’s view that the debt bubble burst because we hit peak oil. He has at least implied if not stated that a few times as I recall.
I think the debt bubble starting to burst is simply the result of a failed economic system. Bonner and Wiggins, “Financial Reckoning Day”, written in ’03 or ’04 explained what would happen to America ala Japan – quite presciently except for the Greenspan/Fed housing wildcard. Japan hit it’s debt bubble long before peak oil, and they were always a net importer.
Our system, like Japan’s, reached the limits of what the productive capacity of the economy could sustain and pyramid n-fold orthogonal to our energy situation. The American economy and the system of globalization as preached by folks like T. Friedman, along with our welfare/warfare state are a Ponzi scheme. I believe it would be collapsing even if America were still the Saudia Arabia of the world.
In terms of peak oil, my hypothesis is that the vast majority of America’s usage of refined petroleum is beyond wasteful. It is unnecessary. Our inefficient vehicles and a huge percentage of transportation that is utterly unnecessary will decline significantly or cease altogether when prices dictate. There will be ample petroleum for farming and transportation for our essential production and distribution systems for several decades – at least enough to make an orderly energy system downgrade. Our economy will be much better off without the waste.
The US’ insolvency problem was not caused by peak oil. It was caused by assuming too much debt. Peak oil will exacerbate the problem to be certain.
As far as my long and short view on the financial situation. I have stated my opinion. The problem is too much debt, and it needs to be liquidated. The losses must be acknowledged and born by the stakeholders. Debt is the problem. Eliminating it is the only solution. Let the collapse be swift and comprehensive. It will be devastating; most devastating for the imprudent lenders and borrowers in way over their heads.
Better to let them bear the brunt of the pain of their sins than do what the government is doing now. Namely, they are making everyone co-signers on the debt fueled house-party of the imprudent borrowers and lenders.
So much for being responsible and saving for a rainy day or living from check to check within one’s means, or being a banker or business person who properly managed risk and growth responsibly.
The strategy of papering over the problem and increasing the debt won’t just destroy all but the tiniest of oligarchic insider’s wealth, it will finish the destruction of the moral fabric of society.
When you destroy the prudent at the behest of the imprudent and immoral they won’t be just a little bit angry. When morals and prudence are no longer rewarded they are effectively destroyed. JHK, myself and a lot of others do agree on swift debt liquidation as the best solution.
“End the Fed”, and “Meltdown” by Ron Paul and Tom Woods respectively can inform you better than I can or should here on why we assumed so much debt so irresponsibly and why it is best to liquidate it as fast as possible to restore market equilibrium.
Richard Heinberg’s writings explain very well why TSHTF fan long before the last barrell is hypothetically extracted.
Right now what’s taking a long and ugly dump is our nation’s insolvency. Wait till peak oil truly starts feeding its stream of hooey onto the rotors. Look up Cantarell decline rates for more on that.

I meant:
“Pray for the good folks who are withstanding political bigotry and zealotry to stand up to the oligarchs and wrest the country back into the hands of the people, and that you don’t drive them to just give up and leave you and the rest of the partisans to rot in the hellish trash bin they are creating for us all.”

The following is very much off topic …
A week or so ago I announced my refusal to read another lengthy Asoka copy-and-paste. It is only fair that I do the same with Cuddletuffy (some others are borderline). It’s a shame too because his stuff seems to be original, not copy and paste. I give it the scroll-wheel spin test and if it’s too long-winded I skip it.
I marvel at political junkies; how do they get that way? What kind of childhood? People like Chris Matthews, The McLaughen(sp?) Group. The bow-tied black guy. (How many times must he have had the shit kicked out of him by other black guys?) And of course we have our own crew of pol-junkies right here at CFN — Cuddletuffy prime among them — whom some occasionally refer to in friendly shorthand as “CT” which I take exception to. I think it should be “CL” as in Cudd LeTuffy, famous french political pundit known for his slow ruminant-like mastication;)
Another thing off topic …
Last night I was watching the Olympics … specifically the men’s figure skating “short program” and that old line about not dropping the soap in the shower came to mind … if you catch my drift.

I thought some more about your situation.
If you can move in with your family that will give you the opportunity to save some money or at least keep your head above water.
You can’t just start a business with no money. You need that $8000, and you need to get another job. I have started part-time businesses on the side that have grown to totally getting me out of working for others. You have to start small, and you don’t have to borrow money if you work hard and maintain the other job. Even if it is WALMART, even if you have to work 2 jobs, and start a part-time business. Your wife will need to go back to work as soon as she can work out a family member or friend watching your children.
Children are expensive, and the expenses don’t end until they are self-sufficient.
The US System isn’t so bad, you can work hard, and if you don’t live beyond your means you can pull yourself out of the financial mess you are in. I have meet people who have come to the US who could barely speak English and have started thriving businesses. Easy. HELL NO. They work many many hours. Satisfying. Yes. There is opportunity all around you no matter where you live.
No debt, don’t borrow for a car or house. With your credit you won’t be able to borrow for awhile anyway which is good.
I still drive used cars and my grown kids make fun of me because they know I could drive a much more upscale ride.
I suggest you read a book called the millionaire next door and my money or my life.
Learn to live on a simple budget.
Turning people’s yard into gardens is a great idea, but you need money now from a steady income to feed your family. That should be part-time.
Nothing wrong with dreaming, but have a real job and the dream going on at the same time…

Here is an interesting link to an article The Future of the Dollar. globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17677
Especially interesting is part III, listing the sales and purchases of gold by China & India.
So it looks like China has been using all those $ to purchase real assets in other countries, not just letting them pile up in a vault…
This means that if the $ collapses, or we try to inflate our debt away, it really won’t affect them, as they won’t be holding $’s, they will have exchanged them for assets in other places.
Got Dollars?

Vlad, I rarely know what to say to you, and I assume you enjoy that. It’s hard for me to believe that people still exist who think like you do, and even more amazingly, are willing to speak so freely about their bigotry.
It’s my opinion that if you had been the one to invent agriculture, you would have defined the social injustice first, and the cropping systems as an after-thought.

Dale,
Thanks, man. It will take me til dinner to read that article I think, but I’ll work on it. Apparently it’s only one part of many, to boot. Interesting website – I like their tagline.
I don’t take anything without a very large grain of salt, and you may have noticed that my philosophy isn’t exactly what one might call “mainstream.” Where Vlad gets the idea that I’m parroting slogans is beyond me. Slogans from where exactly??
As with most perspectives, the people here who suit me generally offered thoughts that suit me as well, and those that don’t, did not. But for this task I tend toward the so-called “initial floristic composition” model of ecosystem succession, applied in this case to the genesis of a new way of being for my family. What Jim might refer to as “a different way of inhabiting the landscape.” This model, as opposed to the slow and steady classical succession model, is comparable to the shotgun approach: throw it all out there and see what sticks to the wall. (Or what sticks around to develop into a mature ecosystem.)
Ecosystems generally experience this shotgun blast after disturbance, say a fire, when every dormant seed in the area comes up all at once; even though 30 years later the ecosystem composition will likely be unrecognizable compared to that original post-disturbance assemblage.
I think of Peak Oil as a major disturbance to the human ecosystem, and the successful systems that emerge from that disturbance will not only be culture-specific, but site-specific as well.
But I think it’s that initial riot of ideas that improves the chances for a viable system. That creative surge that Mean Dovey Cooledge was talking about is, quite literally, the intial floristic composition model in action. Only some of it will work, but the more colors there are on the palette the better the chances that good art will emerge.
Why are your comments so rare these days, Dale?

Clifs Notes for Q:
Thanks, Dale. I’ll take everyone’s suggestions with a grain of salt for sure, but I like the shotgun approach to developing a new way to inhabit the landscape: throw it all against the wall and see what sticks.

Why are your comments so rare these days, Dale?
===========================
Not really interested in most of the discussion. Didn’t find the posturing and argumentative style conducive to my own mental health. As William James said “what you attend to is your reality” and I didn’t want that to be any part of my reality anymore.
I like the authors notion of being a “screen door” through which such extreme dualistic positioning and egoistic thinking just passes through and continues on into the night without any effect. At best have compassion for the ones we all know are suffering. Have fun.

I get your point. And I’ve certainly come away from CFN with a bitter taste in my mouth at times. Surely we all have.
But forums like this have great value too I think. We’ve spent the last few hundred, or even several thousand, years dividing up the labor involved in human life. Recently that division of labor has gotten pretty darned specialized too. Makes sense, there are billions of people out there who all want to do something different and special.
I see this forum as one way to start reconnecting those pieces and figuring out how to handle a greater variety of tasks as that extreme diversification, based on long-distance supply chains and cheap fuel, starts to reconsolidate.
Like capillaries between artery and vein, I value the knowledge of the carpenter, the economist, the plumber, the nurseryman, the mechanic, the nurse, and the artist. (And many others!) And I think it must be the people with the highest degree of specialization that feel the most aversion to the discussion. Surely the future belongs to the generalist. IMHO.
Then again, maybe Asia just drove you crazy. Nice to hear from you now and then though.

Tripp, I have little knowledge of the practicalities of things in the US but I think you’re on track to a better life. I think there’s a tendency to confuse prosperity and happiness with middle class amenities but I’ve found that middle class amenities are stress and aggravation.
Our neighbours in the apartment next door were from Algeria. Husband, wife, two small school age boys and a newborn living in a one bedroom apartment. Happiest people I’ve known. Hubby brought home $700/week. To him, this was paradise, all they could eat, halal meat everyday. Who could dare ask for more? He gave thanks at the mosque every Friday without fail. At the time I was a well paid but stressed cube dweller with cholesteral levels that could fuel a moonshot. I envied him his happiness.
Good luck to you (and beware of crappy neighbourhoods).

Cash, I really appreciate your input. I know you and I see the world in different ways, but we rarely bother each other about it. This post of yours hit the spot.
I found middle class cube life desperately wanting, and the greatly reduced stress of poverty to be a real breath of fresh air. Not to mention an absolute boon to creativity. Waking up to my little girl padding down the hallway toward our room instead of the psyche-grating beep-beep-beep of work calling has probably been the most unexpected joy.
As Jack Johnson says, “when the whole world fits inside of your arms, do you really need to pay attention to the alarm?”
Wake up slow. Mmm-hmmm, wake up slow.
Now we’re just trying to figure out a way to live it for good. Thanks, man. I wish you the best.

‘I suggest you read a book called the millionaire next door ‘
Well you sure said a mouthful there. Stanley/Danko dont read like JHK/heinberg etc.
having read all those authors very carefully. I read dankos 2 books. when TSHTF anyone whos following stanley/ dankos in a mess. that being said the 2 books are very well written, they just dont take facts like the us economy and the biospheres imploding into account.
dankos writnings are good for peeps like asoka.

Yahoo news featured a piece this week on a couple that was paid to move to a small town in [dakota?]
and how after being given a house and $ they want out, to florida or some warm place. they tried owning a coffee bar but claim harrassment from the competition etcetc.

This has been the first debate I’ve followed all the way through – and prompted me to log in and join in.
What did it (for me) was the real-life what-to-do postings above.
Personally, I’d like to see more of this in future columns – it was the area that I felt the Long Emergency was weakest in. That and farming (a farmer, while taking part in what we the media calls industrial agriculture, is still a guy that has to fix things with his own hands on a day-to-day basis; usually with wire and scrap).
But please, everybody, I couldn’t care less for the right vs left ideological arguments. Neither system works – when I say works, I means as in you cannot apply it to all people in a given country, let alone across the globe. It’s all a big lie; unfortunately, it divides people that would otherwise come up with a lot of good ideas.
Back on topic, Greece has long been an economic basket case, as has been noted above. My parents take their vacation in Greece – before EMU they went for two weeks; afterwards, when prices rocketed, they could only afford the one week. The average Greek cannot afford to be part of an economic system that attempts to fix prices of goods across an entire continent, especially one with rich markets like Germany.
Looks to me that the Euro was a gamble that, while it’s too early to call a failure, certainly didn’t come off as anticipated. What it needed was for oil to be traded by Euro rather than US$. It didn’t happen. Whatever behind-the-scenes pressure the US put on oil producers worked. (Think you’ve got problems now – that would have flushed the US economy down the toilet.)
However, I can’t see how peak oil plays into this, other than being a final push to systems in long term decline. Personally, I don’t read the end of the world into this.

Euroland, aside from it’s breathtaking urbanity and excellent transportation, has always been a bit overrated. For all of the glories of its’ past, the European subcontinent has never produced a composer with the genius of Ray Charles, a director like John Ford or a leader with the dignity and courage of Abraham Lincoln. It’s easy to forget in our current state of mediocrity, but America was once a beacon of hope and inspiration for the world.

The main point in that book is
“live within your means” and “frugality”
If the concept was applied in government and personally if saves you alot of added stress.
I learned it from two parents who grew up on farms in the depression. It wasn’t cool to be organic farmers then, but they ate well.

“I couldn’t care less for the right vs left ideological arguments:
Exactly. It is what works that we should be pursuing, practical solutions, pragmatism.
The labels “right” and “left” placed on people are ways to stop communication.
Right now Obama is making proposals to have a spending freeze, construct nuclear plants, pay as you go (that is frugality, living within your means), tax cuts, investing in small businesses, etc.
But because some people have labeled Obama as “leftist”, they stop listening to his proposals, which are identical to Republican proposals.
I heard about one bill to reduce deficits, that was written by and sponsored by Republicans, but when Obama supported it the Republicans voted against their own bill!
Something is not working when the labels are so strongly applied and work so strongly against communication and finding practical solutions.

They just want the power. Not interest in solutions
In NJ
When a government worker contributes $150,000 to their pension. They retires with a payout of 3 million plus healthcare. The numbers just dont work.
Their governer is actually taking steps to cut spending without raising taxes.

OK Mook, it’s like this:
I went to school as a “non-traditional” student at UF and graduated cum laude on Saturday, August 7th, 2004. I worked in estuarine ecology while studying biology, and got a job as an ecologist with the St. Johns River Water Mgmt District in Palatka, FL upon graduation. I worked there in the Regulatory group until I was laid off due to contract cuts on September 30th, 2007.
I cashed out my savings and maintained the bills and mortgage as long as I could and got the house ready to sell. No jobs in my field were available, nor any in just about any other field for that matter. Florida got hit hard and fast.
We moved to Spokane, WA, arriving June 12th, 2008, at roughly lunch time. On January 21st, 2009 I had a life-changing epiphany about permaculture and have been nose down studying and raising our little girl ever since.
On March 19th, 2010 we will depart for Macon, GA, and what happens after that is anyone’s guess.
There, is that specific enough for you? 😉

Remember the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia? The TV showed a beautiful city that looked just like Vancouver or Lake Placid. Eight short years later we watched the siege of Sarajevo in which 12,000 people were slaughtered by the Bosnian Serbs over the next four years. Things can go bad fast—right past belligerence and straight to barbarism. Our host is right on the mark with his warning.

asia asks: “??????? what crime?”
asia, the crime is domestic political terrorism, which I accused Ron Paul of indirectly supporting by the rhetorical stands he takes on abortion, taxes, right to bear arms, etc.
Crimes like walking into a church and shooting down a physician in front of his family.
Crimes like flying planes into an IRS building in Austin, Texas.
The tea parties are FILLED with Ron Paul supporters and domestic terrorists who hate the U.S. Government, hate taxes, and hate the Fed.

Did I read this correctly,building nuclear power plants,spending freeze?
That don’t add up.
Besides,because of virtually no heavy industry and manufacturing left in this country,we have an oversupply of electric capacity.
The problem is with the moron management of these private utilities,coming out of remedial schools like Harvard,where many of our glorious leaders are released upon society.

Asia,
What crimes??? Exactly. Read the previous week’s threads if you have time, and you’ll see what this is about.
Asoka,
Asia is right. What crimes? This would be a great test of your evidence. Gather your evidence, bring it to all the DA’s in all the districts where these crimes took place, and accuse Ron Paul of these crimes. Let’s see how much your evidence compels any of these DA’s to file charges and prosecute.

That is good feedback. I think you are right. I really should find a forum that doesn’t have scroll-wheel standards for what is worth reading, and no standards for what gets posted.
I’ve learned a lot from the commentary hear over the past few months. This week’s thread has been informative about how widespread the initial impact of the Long Emergency is.
Seeing people find common ground with digital strangers is quite heartening and made me forget about the darker side of the reactive ignorance we see here too. It is good to see that we will all find our way and have fun doing it.
Be well, and may true happiness be the measure of our prosperity.
Coraggio!

We are many Trip – and more all the time. Should I be ashamed of my Culture and Race? Or are you saying I should be put in prison? Think about it because you don’t know yourself as well as you think you do.
Of course you don’t know what to say to me: I bring up a fundamental flaw in your vision. You then either ignore my comment or try to defend yourself pathetically. But you can’t because your vision is incomplete and you are just wrong on the points I bring up. Your vision of Nature focuses on soil and plants, agriculture in particualar. But that’s only part of Nature. Man is both a mammal and more because he is capable of thought. If you want to use Nature to study Man, fine. But forget the plants for a bit and focus on the Great Apes. And of the Great Apes, the chimp in particular. And yes, we take after them far more than the Bonobo. They live in groups, defend their territory, and go to war. That’s us Trip. It’s not going to change any time soon. The Blacks and Browns are not going to forgive us. That’s just a fact. They have used and will use our guilt as a weapon against us. As for themselves, they feel guilty of nothing; are not capapble of collective guilt. What’s good for their group IS the Good. This is simple observation. There is no need for a theory here at all. If you can’t see it, it’s because you’re not looking. And if you’re not looking, it’s because you don’t want to see. And if you don’t want to see, it’s because you’re committed to a fiction, an ideology that strokes your ego – that you and your kind are the “Good White Brothers” not like those other evil Whites like me. Trust me, the dark ones will not discriminate in the End. In the short term, they will use your disloyalty as a weapon against us. But after they’ve thrown us down the pit, they’ll throw you people down too. Or keep you around as slaves and breeding stock to produce blondes.
Anyway, good luck to you in spite of everything. The South is not a good choice btw. Much of it is due to come under Black Control. The rest will be sword land fought over by Hispanics, Blacks, and even Whites. Most guys like you have wives who are teachers and who can support them. Maybe when the baby is older she can go back to work and give you the slack you need to get on your real feet. You’re going to have to get real creative, somehow marketing yourself an advanced gardner and/or coach. One way would be teach classes at Adult Education Centers. It would give you a chance to make clients as well as do the teaching you love so much. But you might have to do some shit work for a few years before she’s ready to go back out. But since you two are only having one, it’s feasible – if Society holds together.
Slack is our version of the Tao just as Funk is the Black Man’s version. Thank Bob for Slack! And Pipes and tube socks, and newpapers to read and all good things.

Is this the racial harmony that Tripp believes in? Perhaps! You decide. Ah Boise State University – an idylic place of learning seen though a rainbow mist over hill and Dale! Is he associated with this halcyon institution? If not, he should be!amren.com/mtnews/archives/2010/02/boise_state_cul.php

Vlad, I’m done with this. Better just say what Vlad needs to say now, because I have this idea that we’ll have to get to know you by a new name soon.
You’re probably the most demented person I’ve ever met, btw. And I grew up in the South.

a vote against paygo or against raising the debt ceiling $1.9 TRILLION?campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=32603
Oh, and here is the transcript for US Press Secretary announcing PAYMO’s signing:
”
MR. GIBBS: Well, I will — I was wrong earlier. If you want to let folks know, just got word that the debt limit PAYGO will be signed later today.
Q Behind closed doors?
”
that was the only mention of paymo. more dog and pony. only the War Party would call raising the debt ceiling by $1.9 TRILLION a debt limit. how about another round of Doublespeak for the flock?

LOL!
Cuddletuffy, put down those pom poms and slowly step backwards away from the “Campaign for Liberty.”
Campaign for Liberty is a political organization founded by a federal government bureaucrat who has been on the federal dole forever (namely ten-term United States Congressman Ron Paul. You sure you are not a former Ron Paul campaign worker?)
=============================
— “intentional incitement of imminent and likely unlawful conduct” is unprotected by the First Amendment
— hundreds of hate crimes are committed by groups like the neo-nazi Stormfront (75 domestic terrorist plots, most of which involved individuals with extreme antigovernment views have been discovered against the IRS)
— Ron Paul accepted campaign funds from Stormfront

Cuddletuffy, you do realize that by being against this freshly xerox’d money you are, by default, FOR a more rapid societal decrease in standard of living, don’t you? It’s something we should all be practicing for, but are you ready? There’s no growth left to be had. The ride is over. From here on it’s just navigating descent.
These jackasses pumping the meter are propping the system up so that they can keep taking withdrawals from the public ATM, but they’re providing the rest of us with time to prepare.
We should use it wisely.

First – stop the job loss.
Second – increase jobs.
Third – reign in debt.
This is practical economics. And it’s working, but slowly.
Has the stimulus produced a miracle? No.
It did stem the tide and provide an opportunity to turn things around.
Can we bounce back from the worst economy in decades in the course of 12 months. No.
Will we come back if these kinds of improvements continue. Yes!
The graph linked to below shows progress in comparison to the prior year.my.barackobama.com/page/content/recoveryanniversary/
Empirically you cannot deny the trend.

trippticket Another simple-minded clusterfucker who thinks that there are various races of humans. Hey moron, do some reading about DNA.
And then we have that group of morons that want high speed trains to haul freaks from point A to point B really fast! You ever ride on public transportation? Half the people on there on criminals.

Tripp,
Yes. Our standard of living must decline. The sooner the better. I am scared, and I am prepared. I have more often than not in my posts chosen my words carefully. I know I take up a lot of space. I sincerely apologize. Complicated subjects in combination with my lesser intellect require it.
We’ve had whatever time we’ve had so far in these bodies to prepare. That is the point. People who lived within their means and legitimately saved, no matter how much or how little, should not have their preparation and prudence destroyed by the xerox’d money. We’ve all been hit hard enough. It is time to let the chips fall where they may.
Better to have a decent number of prudent and honest people remain standing w/ capital to invest, than to destroy everyone but the few immoral parasites running the printing presses and trading against us every step of the way.
Think they’ll stop feeding after the final crack-up boom? A collapse would ensure they found their rightful place – well at least they would have if the government hadn’t assumed their liabilities.
Let’s audit the Federal Reserve for Christ’s sake! It isn’t too late to expose the theft and prosecute them for it. Time is, however, getting short. For the envious and the prudent there was no better opportunity for redistributing wealth than ’08.
In all honesty, any further, “preparations”, at this point are merely further thefts from future generations, honest savers and any honest, trusting or unsuspecting creditors.
The government’s statistics are highly manipulated to the point of fraud, and their stories are blatant lies. It is time to give up the ghost. It is time to give up governing and being governed by press release, and pretending it is anything more than that.
It is time to stop borrowing and pretending that, “some day some other guy will have the money I don’t have to pay back my loans.” Those some other guys are honest hard working people and all of our children – not to mention the lenders in China, Japan, Russia… You know, those people over there who sweat while we thunk, (or cravenly devoured our way to China on their tab it turned out). Do we really want to piss them off w/ such a massive paper fraud?
We’re such narcissistic little babies. It isn’t just America, it is the world we’ve borrowed from while we’ve tramped all over it and bombed it. We are assholes.
“I need time to prepare. I just need to steal a little more from my neighbor and the world. Peace? I voted for change. I voted for (insert name of any politician who carries forward the imperial agenda which is all but about 5 or 6 at the Fed level). My guy said he would fight the good war. When he/she justifies pre-emptive war it is okay, cuz I like him/her.
It’s not my fault that I didn’t throw the bums out when they kept the wars going. They promised me goodies that we don’t have the money to pay for. Their statistics are lies?!?! Don’t tell me they’re lies. You are just a racist and anti-government. And selfish. Don’t forget selfish. How dare you not saddle our great-grandchildren with more debt and destroy the pensions and savings of our elders!!
How dare you dissent! This is America. We don’t criticize our leaders and peacefully reassert our rights to self-governance and self-determination when the government abuses its power. There is no such thing as honest and intelligent dissent; only anti-government and pro-government. You are with us or against us. Wait! That bad guy said that. Well, I’m not a racist, so it’s okay when I say it. Not when he does, cuz he is the badman.
One last thing. Be quiet and read the latest government statistics. Things are getting better. I know because they told me so.”
Sorry to be harsh. It is the truth. We are narcissistic thumb-sucking assholes.
It is time for substance. It is time for the truth. The sooner we face it, the less severe the consequences of kicking pandora’s can down the road. It is time to stop lying to ourselves. Too many people want something for nothing. People can try to dismiss honest critics and reformers with lies and slander. Truth is stronger than that.
Obviously this isn’t all aimed at you Tripp. It is aimed at me and you and others far more lost than we are. It’s about time we found out who we really are and what we really have. Honest self assessment is far better than continued depravity. We are not the center of the universe. The longer we self-deceive, the harsher her wake up call of reckoning will be.
There is nothing left to do here. I apologize and regret that my last post was so harsh. Nature has many ways though no regrets. If that is even a redeeming quality at least I have that going for me.
Well on that note … Everyone … Strike up the band and
Learn to swim.
See ya down in Arizona Bay.

Though I often cringe a bit at Jim’s “broad
brush” which “paints” some who ought not be
painted, the dude has his eye on the ball.
He sees Americans continue their 45-minute
one-way commutes, our hideous death-communes
(you know … those all-look-alike Stalinist-
like housing developments)over good, arable
land, and the unabating love of Bradley Tank-
sized vehicles.
We are NUCKING FUTS!!! Hasn’t anyone noticed
that oil just flat won’t go under $70 no matter
how many runs it makes at it? Cantarell in
Mexico is three years from being a dry hole
taking FORTY percent of Mexican GDP with it.
And few outside of Jim have considered the
consequences of OIL NATIONALISM i.e., exporter
countries will STOP EXPORTING for national
survival.
Denial is the emotion of this season of Man.
We pretend the economy is great though no one
can find a job, 49 of the 50 states (yay,
North Dakota!!) need to be bailed out, and
almost all the “growth” is coming from a combo
of inventory building and government slush.
I just hope I don’t survive the other great fuck
in this clusterfuck … the lack of water in the
West outside of Coastal Oregon and Washington.
Las Fucking Vegas and its horrible Senator Reid
will burn in hell on one of those nice 117 degree
summer days. Oh, but it’s a DRY heat!! 🙂 🙂
Eleuthero

The stimulus money is another example of government waste. Taking from Peter to pay Paul.
One program to create solar panels costs
$19,000,000 in taxpayer money
it has created 152 jobs.
Wow!
$125,000 per job for government work. That is so amazing Washington DC.
The avg. American earns around $45,000 per year, paying for handouts to someone earning $125,000 per year…
Common Sense with 8th grade math is beyond this leaders of the free world.

Abbeys, I had noted in a past comment of yours (I think it was you) that you are a disaffected Randian. If so, mazeltov! Only last night I was thinking about one of the many things that troubles me about this admittedly complex person: that Rand praised the United States and yet, almost from the moment she landed, set about subverting it. Not even people like Greg Nyquist have commented on this, that I’m aware of.
In these times, I can think of one “pearl of Objectivism” worth remembering: “When you hear the word sacrifice, run like hell!”

All I can tell you is that Albert Pike is a bit of an enigma. An erudite and scholarly man (if a bit of a blowhard), his Morals and Dogma is no longer issued to candidates. Part of the general dumbing down to which the world is now prey, perhaps.
It doesn’t matter one way or the other. Since I know you read philosophy at university (because you’ve mentioned it), I know you can easily recall that your lecturers gave you set-works that you may or may not have understood or liked. I’ll warrant that no lecturer said that you had to swallow them holus-bolus. So it is in Freemasonry: it’s a society in which people seek an enlarged understanding of divine providence, not a cram school.
Pike was indeed instrumental in the revision of the Scottish Rite in the US. I can’t find any reference to the role of Jews, if any, in this. Have to keep looking.

And yet one of your heroes is the Communist Martin Luther King – who paved the way for Obama and so many other evils. Can’t you see that the Powers on High used Blacks as a battering ram to help destroy the Republic? In many ways, but since you like the Economic – Blacks are so needy, they just NEED a big Federal Goverment to take care of them. Asoka is just a typical Black: big Goverment is in their interest and always will be until the Big Boys don’t need them anymore. And yet the Tea Party thinks they are about to decamp enmasse for Libertarianism! How dumb can you get?

I accept your concession of defeat. When there are two evenly matched debaters, the one with truth on his side will usually win. For Truth is a great Champion even though hated by most. As for your insult, it’s just revenge of the weak. Insults are the first refuge of the incompetent and liberal.

Vlad, reading through Morals and Dogma, I find that Pike really appeals to me: a morally serious man. I think you might actually like him. What I find attractive about Freemasonry is that it takes as its starting point the rather pessimistic view that, from wherever one starts, one is only ever at the beginning of finding the light. Despite this seemingly Gnostic sentiment, Pike, you’ll be pleased to know, dismissed Gnosticism.
I notice that the other day you mentioned Adorno, and someone took a swipe at you for pseudo-intellectualism. Ouch. My sympathies. A quick glance over Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections From Damaged Life yielded this fine nugget: C.G. Jung is a reactionary!
I can’t tell whether I’m bemused or outraged that the last great transmitter of Gnostic thought is described as a reactionary. But Adorno was an aggressively hostile ideologue. On the other hand, every Jungian I’ve ever know has been a total weirdo. And surprisingly conservative in the sense of devoted to maintaining the status quo. That is: know your place, or I will set the law on you, or, failing that, ignore you.
But I suppose this is by way of saying that I do not share your conviction that understanding comes cheap. Saul of Tarsus was wrong. There is no grace. Just work.
You mention books on South Africa. I can think of only one book that has been published that isn’t full of liberal piety, which I have read, which is The Great South African Land Scandal. It has been criticized for factual errors, but I would like to share one detail that resonated with me particularly. When I lived in a small town in that country, I enjoyed the products made by a struggling independent dairy that sold only in the district where I lived, so I was startled to read in Dr. Philip du Toit’s book that that same company was hanging by a thread, besieged by encroachment, stock thefts, and harassment.
That brought it home to me. That, and the fact that it is about the only company in South Africa that makes things to my taste. The company is Wylie’s Dairy.

Tripp, one last thing, this in the What’s Really Important category seeing as you’re revamping your life.
In August my wife had some routine tests where they found a growth in her colon. They took a biopsy and told her it was dangerous (high grade dysplasia) and had to come out. So they took out a foot or so of intestine plus lymph nodes. The whole process from initial test to getting the all clear (no cancer) from the final lab tests of things they removed took about 7 weeks.
I think I slept about 15 minutes the whole time and lost about 20 lbs. Note to file: anxiety is a great calorie burner so if you want to lose weight find something to scare yourself shitless.
This 7 weeks was the best teacher I ever had. Things that used to vex me, like 2 am ululations of nitwit neighbours (oh, oh, oh my god, oooooh my god, oh my GOD!, Me: he can’t be that good, My wife: she’s faking it), a landlord that looks for inventive ways to piss off tenants, local bank employees that think you need a mainframe to calculate simple interest, all recede into microscopic insignificance, after this you couldn’t find them with scanning electron microscopes.
Point is, this trite saying that if you don’t have your health you don’t have anything is true. We all supposedly “know” this. No we don’t, at least I didn’t, not until this episode.
Maybe you’ve been through something like this, maybe you haven’t. But the experience was a real eye opener so I thought I’d relay it. Enjoy your good health while it lasts and milk every day for what it’s worth. What we think we need and what we really need are two radically different things.
End of sermon.

But, to more fully comment, now that I’ve read your reply, I didn’t mean to give offence. God knows, there’s more than enough of that, and I don’t want to wound anyone.
Thank you for taking the time to give a lengthy comment. All I wanted to say, except I didn’t say it, is that if human beings don’t put domination behind them, then we’ve had it. I don’t care how you dress it up. We have to stop. Or we’re fucked. Even Rothbard, who correctly, in my view, identified the state as the enemy of freedom, didn’t advocate its wholesale destruction. Why not? Sometimes I honestly can’t believe the naivety of libertarians. Do you really think limited government is possible? You’ve got a twenty-four carat example right in front of you of why it will never happen. The US federal government. I say federal, but I don’t know why I’m bothering, because state governments aren’t worth a damn. Does anyone actually believe that any of the US states are actually STATES?
I’m going to let the a rather tempestuous political polemicist explain why limited government has been tried and has failed:
“No more dangerous threat to world freedom exists than the American state. This monstrosity, conceived as a revolutionary experiment in limited government, grew to maturity mouthing the slogans of liberty, and proclaiming the ideals which it has trampled upon and betrayed from the very start. And now, in our gloomy age, the noble experiment is totally out of control; it has taken over the laboratory, strangled the experimenter, the fabled “people” in whose name it was created, and not content with this overthrow and consequent annihilation of its inventor and would-be master, it has escaped even from the confines of old. Today it bursts horridly from the corridors of its youth, springs upon a fearful or unsuspecting world, caring only to satisfy one sole hunger and need – power!”

Interesting point.
I’ve often wondered how limited government was possible, across such a large, industrialized country as the US with expectations of standardization – limited government will be brought about by the long emergency, of course.
I never understand the feverishly anti-government mindset. I think there’s a lot of envy of people with such job security and pensions (maybe it’s not viable, but neither are many corporate benefits, and I don’t hear as much about that).
It’s funny but the people that rant about having to pay taxes to support bums, have a sudden conversion when they lose their job, and realize how hard it is to live on welfare.

Tripp, sorry for not responding earlier. I don’t actually have a computer, I use my husband’s laptop, and when he needs it, I am internetless. Which is good, because otherwise I wouldn’t get anything done.
By the way, I am sore all over my body because of you 🙂 I was inspired by you to start a hot compost pile to start my seeds on, and when I went to get my lawn cart to haul chickenshit, I slipped on shingles covered with ice and bit the ice, so to speak. Sore neck, shoulders, back, big bruise on my thigh, but I have started the compost pile, in a container that I hauled from the back of Lowe’s and covered with chicken wire. When it heats up and then cools down, I put the seeds on top and cover it with an old window that I got from people that were redoing their house.
Where did I get my scavenging habits? From the years I spent in absolute poverty when my kids were little.
Funny that Vlad would recommend looking at chimpanzees, because that is what I did.
Turns out that other primates, (and primitive tribes), don’t put their children in cages separated from their parents by walls. They don’t turn their infants over to others to raise, so they can have money to buy stuff.
They carry them around next to their bodies, nursing them when they are hungry, and comforting them when they are upset.
So I chose to treat my infants like the little primates they were. I saved money by not buying a crib, or a stroller, or bottles, or a lot of other baby “accessories” that people nowadays believe they must have as part of the baby acquisition process.
And, of course, as a Green, I didn’t use paper diapers. This also saved a lot of money. After the kids took a bath, I threw the diapers in the water for the first rinse, and then we washed them in the washing machine attached to our apartment complex, which, if you put a quarter in and then duct taped it, would wash a couple of loads of clothes, which I then hung around the apartment to dry.
Here’s the thing about poverty. Although it totally sucks for the parents, for the kids it’s pretty good when they’re young.
What do little humans like? Other little humans to play with. What is there plenty of in a poor neighborhood? Little humans.
And actually, it’s better for the parents to have their children entertained by other kids rather than have to entertain them yourself.
I watched my kid and another kid jump off the front step about 500 times, laughing each time. I had no interest in jumping off that step even once. I was very glad to have another kid there.
Same with schools. When they’re little, they can learn anywhere. We used to get a “report card” on the schools, showing my kids test scores, as compared to the rest of the kids in the school, and comparing the schools to the rest of the schools.
The schools I sent my kids to were very poor and the test scores showed it. They were pathetically low. But my kids scores were as high as the kids in the other, richer, schools.
Because we read to them and talked to them and did all the things that rich people did for their kids.
We took them to the library on the nights that they had group reading and we checked out books and read to them.
So I wouldn’t worry about the neighborhood or the schools, at least when they are young. Later, as teenagers, when peer pressure kicks in, and being stupid is cool, you may want to look for alternatives.
Good luck on finding an income source. As long as you’re growing your own food, and own your own house, you won’t need much.
And, if you live by your parents, you can always go there for dinner!

I think the US is just too big and too diverse to be governed from Washington. Look at the paralysis on health care reform. Mind blowing that even with a big Dem majority and decades to mull it over they still manage to fuck it up. It seems you just can’t corral legislators even in the same party.
But as Martin H says the states are totally useless too. Too small, too bankrupt. One guy I worked with, a specialist in US state tax, said about them, “imagine 50 third world governments none of which talk to each other.”
Maybe a restructuring, like a grouping of states near one another would work ie Cascadia, the Southwest, the old Confederacy, the Midwest, the indutrial Northeast each with a regional capital. The old states would just be lines on a map with no more power and the old state legislatures just museum pieces. Or maybe something like a red state/blue state divide.
You’d still have a common American citizenship with mobility and residence rights with Washington making foreign policy and monetary policy but other things run from the regional capitals. Or maybe just get rid of the damned Fed altogether. Seems like it does more damage than good anyways.
No point trying to pound square pegs into round holes. Just a thought.

Best wishes to you and your wife, Cash.
You’re lucky to live in Canada. Sounds like she was treated quickly.
My mother was told that she might have lung cancer and needed to see a pulmonary specialist for a bronchoscopy. The soonest appt was 3 months! That’s a long time to wait for a diagnosis, especially, of course, because after the initial appt, she had to wait for the actual test.
Luckily, she didn’t have cancer.
I love how people claim that the US has the best health care in the world. My mom has insurance, and she still had to wait.
People without insurance just don’t get treated. They come to the ER, and we refer them to specialists, and the specialists tell them to bring cash (in the hundreds, depending on the doctor) to the first appt, and they don’t have it, so they come back to the ER. We don’t treat cancer.

Cuddletuffy, I have to admit that your long post to me is pretty confusing. I have a feeling you and I are similar in that we have lots to say, but aren’t the best of teachers. It tends to come off as stream-of-consciousness, without much cohesion.
I’m ready for the charade of industrial culture to end, and I’m obviously tired of the theft from the future. My whole gig is regenerative human ecosystems. Permaculture is completely different than anything humans have engaged in in a long time. By and large.
I don’t even think where we are ultimately headed is disappointing, having lived it for a while now. I actually think it’s fairly redemptive.
But I’ll try again to collect your thoughts.

according to radio the biggest ESP in oregon was the 100 million [?] ‘ green building redesign!
and asoka, if things are so good whys Soros buying gold?:
Gold is now the single largest investment in the multi-billion dollar fund George Soros runs. Why was Soros trashing gold when he just bought more of the yellow metal?????

Vlad, there’s no concession of defeat. You’re a monster, and I have nothing more to say to you. I don’t want to lock you away, I just want you to go away. People like you are the only thing that gives me anxiety about the future.
Why there hasn’t been a greater community outcry about your post to me causes me some concern. I can only assume that it was long enough that some folks skipped it, and others may just be more used to that kind of garbage spewing from your pie-hole.
The only request I have for the future is that you live a long goddam way away from me. Montana sounds nice. And maybe moving into the ghetto in Georgia will ensure that you won’t be nearby, with your seething hatred for everyone but yourself.
You have deeply offended and saddened me, and I’m not going to waste my time with you anymore.

I think I’m going to take some time off from this conversation. About the time it seems like we’re heading somewhere productive, agrarian human nature takes over and we wallow in the mire for a while.
I’m done wallowing in the mire.
Good luck everyone, and thanks for the conscious commentary.

I’m from England, living in Canada – both have essentially the same healthcare system.
Us outsiders, looking in at US healthcare, most often describe your hospitals as “like hotels.”
Reforming the US healthcare system, in the current economic climate, would mean having hosptials that are like factories, that churn out people – who do are large part of their recuperating at home.
Asking US citizens to pay more for less is a tough sell. (Frankly, asking anyone in North America to pay for poorer people crosses too many social boundries to be viable.)

those Tguys and gals:
‘ hate taxes’………..as do you pal!!!!!
‘hate the govt’ ……yr the one for open borders!
‘ domestic terrorists’??? yr bs is laughable!
illegals kill 3000? us citizens a year.
and rape and kidnap many more. I read that Ph. arizona is the kidnap capitol of the world. more kidnappings than falloujah[?].

Wage, glad to hear about your mother. It’s a horrible wait isn’t it? My wife had her operation 5 weeks after the initial test so the treatment was quick.
Problem with this health care debate is it’s encrusted with ideology, money and deep, deep stupidness so doing what works gets short shrift. Same boneheadedness in Canada as the US.
We have problems here that we can’t discuss because otherwise the shrieking starts. The exception is Quebec. The language there being French, they are tuned into what goes on in France and other places and so are open to alternative ways. Health care being provincially run they are free to innovate.
Not so in English Canada. Here it’s a test of your ideological and patriotic bona fides that you hew to the status quo, practicality be damned. Suggest any change and you’ll be cursed as a neo-con, not that anyone knows what that is, and accused of wanting to Americanize the system, not that anyone here has a bloody clue about it. We are so closed minded and so stupid, stupid stupid.

Yes, the waiting is horrible. Then they told her she might have TB and not to go anywhere for 6 weeks until the test came back.
My mother HATES staying at home.
Turned out she didn’t have TB either.
My mom, my sister and I were all born and raised in LA. We all have bad lungs.
Gee, what a mystery!

The standard statement, from over here, is that a US hospital is “like a hotel.”
I have heard this from patients and medical staff – a labour & delivery nurse, who worked for a time in the US, said the same thing (and that her US colleagues referred to her workplace in Vancouver as a “tree-hugger hospital”).
That’s the perception. High class hosptials, the finest medical staff, and quite luxurious – so long as you have medical insurance. (It is not used as anti-US sentiment, by the way.)
I’m quite sure it’s not the truth. I’m sure there’s some form of sample bias going on here – the people I’ve spoken to weren’t talking about an emergency ward in an inner city, but in-patient care in upscale neighbourhoods.
Our hospitals aren’t hell holes, so much as utilitarian (I’ve heard stories about people in Greek hospitals, a couple of years back, having to have friends come in and help out as their dried blood had stuck to the sheets; the doctors did little more than drop cigarette ash over them).

Totally. Reading the comments in, I think, the Indie this past week, I learned that Britain decided on the welfare state after the Second World War because it would afford the country an economic advantage. It wasn’t down to altruism, apparently.
This was a surprise to me. I had always assumed that the British government instituted welfarism as a reward for the sacrifices it had demanded of the populace in war time. Wrong. It was done to make Britain more economically competitive by, I suppose, offering a sop to the newly unemployable to keep them at home watching telly and off the streets.
I don’t care what the politicians decide, though. To me, welfarism is an attempt by the state to counterfeit the bond that naturally existed between people in pre-industrial times, but which is sundered by industrialism, and which the state belatedly realises must be addressed, yet treats in the manner that it treats most problems: throw money at it and hope it goes away.
Not that I don’t welcome any attempt, whatever the motive, to provide of those who, for whatever reason, are unable to provide for their own happiness and comfort.

Tripp, I for one would like you to stick around. you’re an invaluable commenter here. I pay close attention to you, and I’m sure there must be others. Don’t get pissed at the quality of conversation; there is no conversation. Socially speaking, this blog is about as satisfying as a court-mandated AA meeting: just pass the Valium and speak to those who are ready to hear your message. Speaking for myself, you’ve won me over to permaculture. I’m starting with being a bee-keeper, which I’ve always wanted to do. I expect my neighbors won’t be happy, though.

One last thing. Be quiet and read the latest government statistics. Things are getting better. I know because they told me so.”

Two things:
1) CPI and BLS data are not manipulated by the executive branch. Your paranoia is showing.
2) When the situation was getting worse each month under Bush… and CPI and BLS data indicated increasing job losses every month, were you skeptical of that data, too? Is everything that is issued by government agencies a lie? Once again your anti-government paranoia is showing.
Or, is it only when the country has its first Black president that the data begins to seem doubtful to you?

Say, Vlad, lets play a little game:
Name the Winners of the last two Great Race Wars:
War Numero Uno: The US Civil (I just luv that, a nice, Civil war, um, anyway)War. Who won?
Choice #1: The White Supremacist South; or
Choice #2-o: The North.
Extra bonus point if you can Name That Prezident!
War Numero Two-o: World War Two
Choice #1: The Fair-Haired, Blue-eyed, Aryan leaders of the Pure Choosen Master Race; or
Choice #2-o: Every one else.
Extra bonus point: Which leader died ignominiously in a bunker with a gun in his mouth?
Care to play, looser?
Thought not.

Tripp, I was originally thinking of drafting you first for my fantasy CFN team. Then you spoke of your situation. My first reaction was to help you out but then I thought about all the scams out there. I guess I was nitpicking. Anyway, if you want me to contribute a tank-full of gas for your trip just let me know where to send the money order. Mook.

Dee you dumb clusterfucker nobody won the civil war, we all lost and are continuing to lose. Vlad speaks the truth about a certain group of people, and he is called a monster. Read the fucking crime stats and learn who the monsters are. The victims of brainwashing don’t realize that the washing happened.

George W. Bush left office wearing the same smirk he came in with. Perhaps it’s congenital. But if Bush was smirking when he left office, he must now be convulsed in crazed hysterical laughter. His gang not only got away clean, but Obama carries on the dark Bush-Cheney legacy. And, almost as if to top the whole black escapade with a cherry of irony, the most inarticulate president in American history is now on the motivational speaking circuit at $200,000 a pop. Never let it be said that the Devil does not care for his own.

All of these are terrible things for a president who ran on reform and change to continue to do. But it is the thing Barack Obama and his party did not do, the thing they did not insist upon, that will have the greatest ongoing effect on this country. Obama and the Democrats refused to prosecute Bush and Cheney, ensuring that:
1 — No quail hunter is Georgia will ever be safe as long as Cheney’s pacemaker still functions;

The banking mob, the insurance mob, and other criminally organized legislative muscle men, cartels and commodity syndicates, are all officially sanctioned as “interest groups” operating alongside hundreds of others in that whorehouse by the Potomac River.
To list just a few, there are environmental interest groups such as the Sierra Club, which exists so its officers can draw fat salaries and meet movie star environmentalists. There is an interest group for education, which exists to assure the mediocrity of our public schools. Munitions manufacturers are an interest group. Gambling casinos and tobacco corporations are interest groups. There is an interest group to force feed us corn sugar, in order to sustain Midwestern Republican farmers and ensure the future of the ever expanding weight loss and diabetes industries. There are even lobby groups to protect the interests of syndicates in other countries, such as Israel. There is an interest group for everything except we ordinary American pudwhackers. The folks who just want to raise families in peace, and maybe have modest financial security in old age. And there are thousands of interest groups whose purpose is to make damned sure we never get either one.

All the green energy sources and eating right and voting right cannot fix what has been irretrievably ruined, but only make life amid the ruination slightly more bearable. Species gluttony is nearly over and we’ve eaten the earth and pissed upon its bones. Not because we are cruel by nature (though a case might be made for stupidity) but because the existence of consciousness necessarily implies each of us as its individual center, the individual point of all experience and thus all knowing. The accumulated personal and collective wounds fester and become fatal because there is no way to inform the world that we must surrender our assumptions, even if we wanted to. Which we do not because assumptions are the unseen cultural glue, the DNA of civilization. If we did so, the crash would be immediate.
So we postpone transformation through truth, and stick with what has always worked — empire and consumption. And we twiddle our lives away thorough insignificant fretting about mortgages and health care and political parties and pretend the whole of American life is not a disconnect. Hell, all of Western culture has become a disconnect. Somebody needs to tell the Europeans too; progressive Americans give them entirely too much credit for the small positive variation in their cultures and ours. We both get away with it only so long as the oil and the entertainment last.

The front page of today’s newspaper tells me that 41 million motorists will gas up and hit the road today, July 3rd. Another five million will sip drinks and read magazines while zipping through the stratosphere, in 747s that burn the day’s oxygen production of a 44,000 acre rainforest in the first five minutes of flight just getting off the ground and gaining altitude, adding to the more than 110 million annual tons of atmosphere-altering chemtrail gasses, some of which will remain to hold heat in the upper atmosphere for almost 100 years.
Below it all are the spreading pox-like blotches of economic and ecological ruins of dead North American towns and city cores, such as downtown Gary Indiana, Camden, Newark, Detroit — all those places we secretly accept as being hellish because, well, that’s just what happens when blacks take over, isn’t it? Has anyone seen downtown Detroit lately? Of course not. No one goes there any more. Miles of cracked pavement, weeds and abandoned buildings that look like de Chirico’s Melancholy and Mystery of a Street. Hell, for all practical purposes it is uninhabited, though a scattering of drug addicts, alcoholics and homeless insane people wander in the shadows of vacant rotting skyscrapers where water drips and vines crawl through the lobbies, including the Ford Motor Company’s stainless steel former headquarters. (See the works of Chilean-born photographer Camilo José Vergara.) It is the first glimpse of a very near future, right here and now for all to see.

Yes I am the Monster. I offended the Beautiful Man. Well the Beautiful Man gets pretty nasty when disagreed with.
What’s your point? Several times now the West has tried to free itself from the New World Order – even its earlier stage, the Union. And yes those attempts have failed so far. That does not mean we are wrong, just that the Enemy is formidable and – we fight against ourselves. How do you think WW2 British Veterans feel about their sacrafice? They thought they were fighting for England. Imagine their chagrin when they see their country taking orders from Brussels and Bonn. And their horror at the realization that they have been slated to become part of Eurabia. Do you think they would have fought if they had known this is what they were fighting for?
Sarkozy tried to have a public dialogue about immigration recently. He was shocked at the fury of the French against it. Finally the forum was halted. Why are they asking the People now – after its been done? Asking them now when they are due to become a minority in two generations? If they really cared, they would have asked before they did it.
Nor did the American People get a chance to vote on whether they wanted to be innundated by the Third World. We have shown our rage and they just don’t care. They want us to become a minority in order to break the Republic – so they can reign forever.
So the question comes back to you Dee. Why do you want the White Race to die? And make no mistake, we will: all our Lands are now under seige. All our Goverments are against the rights and sovereignty of their own People. And yet these Elites consider themselves highly moral! It’s outrageous. But it get worse: people like you agree with them. And that is an Unspeakable Tragedy. Liberals have drunk the Kool Aide en masse and are now laying down to die. All they care about is being morally superior to Conservatives. The Brittleness of it. The overwhelming Sterility. They and you are under an evil spell.
A comparison: the Chinese threw out every White Man when they regained their sovereignty. I have no doubt that you support their right to have done so. Guess what my next question is. Why do we not have the same right? When Bill Clinton made his famous speech about Whites becoming a Minority in 50 years, remember how the all White Crowd roared its approval. Doesn’t that seem weird to you? Can you imagine Chinese, Mexicans, or Blacks roaring approval at their own dispossesion? If you can, you are a fool and you don’t really know any. You can find this speech if you missed it. He went on to say that it was an experiment and they didn’t know how it would turn out. Well, how do you feel about being guinea pigs in their experiment? Where is that in the Constitution? And now knowing how it will turn out is bull shit. It will turn out with them on top as designed of course. Forever, because the White Middle Class will be destroyed. So a few Whites on top, and a miscegneated mob of poor people on the bottom. This is paradise? This is worth the destruction of the Republic? To produce a Brazil North? And we’re racists and they aren’t? Billy Boy showed his true colors during the Campaign. So he’s a fraud about that on top of everything else.

Younger men and women will live to rule or rule the day. So seize it for god sake! And listen to the cellular wisdom of the flesh. I did and do and am damned glad of it. Despite what a police court Jehova, Yahweh or Allah may have told us, the only holy thing existent is this the flesh in which we now walk. It leads us toward both good and evil, but it leads, and most probably will bleed if we are on the right path. Yet, what could be better than a meaningful life during meaningless times? Which is everything, whether we be artistic, queer, altruistic, an unheralded ox in the fields of labor — or one of the invisible ones out there with a stone cold determination to kill the supposedly deathless machinery in which we are expected to supplicate daily and call that a life.

Don’t get your panties in a knot over this Vlad. It is not going to be an issue when everyone is fighting for food and water. The stongest will win that battle. The smartest can pretend they have higher knowledge or a live wire to God to maintain superiority. You know, the priest class will rise.
Go see The Road and race will be the least of your worries. Not when water and your next meal consume your energies.

We have shown our rage and they just don’t care. They want us to become a minority in order to break the Republic – so they can reign forever.

You got that right. You show your impotence through your rage.
You will soon be a minority (you are already irrelevant)… and we will reign forever.
We are your worst nightmare… I talk to the military-trained Blacks (with NRA-supported Second Amendment rights) about nonviolence… but, they don’t listen to no MLK jivetalk, so it may just be karmic payback time for you, Vlad.

Sorry it took so long to respond. I had to go to work and put mints onto pillows.
OK, I was ready to write off Canadian delusions until I remembered that my buddy worked as a traveling nurse for a while, and he worked at a hospital in Miami that he said was like a hotel.
Perhaps there are others. There are other cities in this country with a lot of rich people. Just not here.
The worst hospital I ever worked at was in East LA. It had no supplies, even bed linens, it was horribly understaffed, it was just nasty.
There were mostly Filipino nurses, but there were also a couple of Canadian nurses. The hospital was so old that it still had housing for employees.
I’m guessing that the nurses you know didn’t work there.
Why did the hotel hospital in Miami need travelers? Maybe it wasn’t such a good place to work.
The way I look at it is this-
I’m here to save your ass, not kiss it.
And most people I know feel the same.

No doubt that Pike lived an interesting life and was a complicated man. Associated with the KKK as well. I’ve always meant to get my hands on a Morals and Dogma but haven’t up to this point. I’ve heard it’s quite a hodge podge and does need a teacher to present it – unless the reader is very well informed and is highly motivated. He applied to Harvard and was rejected. Years later they tried to offer him an honorary degree – which he turned down. He said that when they could have helped him, they refused. And he wasn’t going to honor them now by letting them honor him.
Jung was the great Gentile Disciple of Freud. Freud, an ardent Zionist, hoped Jung would spread the message to people Freud couldn’t. But instead, he went his own way. I haven’t read too much of him, but I do believe in the archetypes. What significance they have is another matter. Jung seems both conservative and liberal – a good way to be. Certainly he was never taken in by the madness of Communism or the excesses of Nazism. And I have no doubt he would be horrified at the casual or gleeful destruction of Western Civilization and the outrages to the Folk Soul of our People. In this, he is a Man of the Far Right.
I’m going to meet with an old friend soon who has become a Mason. He’s writing a book about Psychedelic Shamanism, and we are going to go over some old times. Perhaps the 30th or so level of the Scotch Rite will come up – where they stab the Pope and crush the Bishop’s Hat. And Madame Blavatsky’s glowing endorsement of the Toldoth Ieushu, a medieval Jewish volume of incredible slander against Christ. And Rene Guenon’s pertinent question: who sent her to the West? I agree with Guenon and Schuon: the Truth may well be universal but the path to it is narrow. Both Grace and Effort are needed, but the Grace is in the narrow Traditions not in the World Council of Churches and things like that. One must go through the Eye of the Needle to find the Freedom of the greater space. And one may know better than one’s fellow religious – a most profound austerity! But one must keep silent; nay as St Paul said, not know what your other hand is doing. I take great comfort in something Fritjof Schuon said, that God will not condemn one for knowing more than most others. Indeed, an old man (and humanity is now old) cannot help knowing a thing or two. Of course this only applied to “old souls” – most people know as little now as they ever did. Try as you will, one can never get away from Hierarchy.
The burning of DeMolay was one of the great sins of the Church. Right up there with Joan of Arc.
That sounds like an interesting book. I just got another name: Dan Roodt. Not a novelist but an essayist who has written about the enslavement of the Boers by the English Imperialists and now the Black African “Nazis” of the ANC. And of course there is the purple prose of Arthur Kemp. He has alot of commonsense though. He says that the South Africans lived an illusion for decades that they could have millions of Black servants and manual laborers and expect to keep their Culture. Whites have to learn to do their own dirty work again. And never forget that Demography is Destiny. That was their undoing ultimately. Kemp emigrated to England and is now a big man with the BNP. The fight goes on.

Read the fucking crime stats and learn who the monsters are. The victims of brainwashing don’t realize that the washing happened.-flyover
Say, fly, I think you need a little more soap, you seem to have missed a spot.
No!! Don’t use dogshit to wash your brains, aw, now you’ve spoiled them. You do know that you can’t get another one, well, mebe an Abe Normal one.
Over & out, Dee Jones

Aw, gee Vlad, don’t take it so personal, its just nature & evolution @work!
You see, when N&E determines that a particular species (or race) has run it’s course, it has a choice: Evolve or Die.
In our case its both the race & species. Perhaps the species will make it, but it won’t be the same as exists now, at the present time.
Perhaps N&E will select FOR the White race, perhaps it will select for a more, say, coffee colored race, with a little more cream in some parts of the world,a little chocolate in others, and some hot, spicyness in other parts.
But rest assured, in the long run, the cream will get well stirred into the coffee. And you know, the coffee will be MUCH better for it.
Speaking of coffee……
Dee Jones out.

Vlad, your comment is intriguing. I can see that there is a gaping hole in my knowledge that up until this time I thought might be filled by Erich Neumann, but which I now see would be better filled by Guénon. And I thought I was making progress by having read and absorbed Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled.
Of course, I haven’t actually read HPB’s tome from cover to cover, any more than I would willingly pour molten lead shot into my eye sockets or lie on a bed on nails, but I did read the second volume in its entirety, which I’m sure you’re aware is a sustained attack on Christianity.
Guénon thought Blavatsky was sent? That sounds a tad too conspiratorial. Methinks you are putting words into his mouth.

Yes the news is full of non news..tiger woods, the kardashians as #1 celeb website and even this:
Duke lacrosse accuser Crystal Gail Mangum promotes book :: WRAL.comOct 23, 2008 … Crystal Mangum is holding a news conference at the Know Bookstore in Durham to promote “The Last Dance for Grace: The Crystal Mangum Story
but now shes charged with murder or attempted murder + 8 ? other charges.

Sarkozy tried to have a public dialogue about immigration recently:
it made page 1 of paper HERE IN LA when Lepenn [?] almost was elected.the times was horrified!
as far as yr use of the term ‘ shock’ politicians are actors. im not convinced sarcozy was truely shocked.

China now has 3,000,000 young unemployed or semi employed college grads. the central govt made the wrong decision in terms of wanting more managerial workers. they call themselves ‘ the ant tribe’ and hope for better days.
the solution? the gals are hoping for marriage and the guys are getting offers to join the army. wonder if theyll be fighting soon in the middle east.
what got to me was how you need family connections to get a job…in a ‘ communist’ society.

I can vouch for that: our hospitals aren’t hell holes.
To my good buds in the US: I know you guys are having a fierce debate about health care. And a lot of stuff has been spouted about our system in Canada.
If you want to know how good or bad things are up here get real life accounts.
So here’s one. Real info as opposed to crap from ideologues on either side of the divide. I’ll keep it short as I can.
My wife was treated at a downtown Toronto hospital (some intestine removed in Sep 09). One really busy place. She spent four days in a room with 3 other really sick patients (AIDS, a drug addict, a dying old lady).
The hospital was no hotel but the nurses were just great, they kept their cool under stress, they were patient, compassionate (my wife can be argumentative). Doctors were awesome, they are gods. All have my undying admiration.
She had to go back to the emergency ward because of fever on a weekend several days after she came home. The ward was a real circus but it ran like a clock.
A doctor came to her almost right away, did a quick exam to make sure she wasn’t dire, looked at her surgical wound and told us it would be a while before they had a better look.
The triage nurse had her put in a room because her case wasn’t that bad and because she would have to wait several hours. Then a surgeon and a nurse came in, apologized for the wait and treated her. Turned out to be a garden variety wound infection.
They arranged for daily visits by a nurse to our apartment for the next month to examine my wife, clean and rebandage her wound until it was fully closed. Nurse was a paramedic in his native Russia.
All of this at no out of pocket cost to us. My wife recovered fully.
And I am as happy as can be. They saved her life. If not for that operation she’d have died of cancer within the next couple of years.
There you have it. One case study on socialized medical care.

“Who are you to say that some other person finally gets it, and what they should or should not finally get or become? Who is any of us to say?”
What? Listen here, you grandstanding toss pot. I know exactly what I’ve gotten from people in the half-century I’ve been alive, and pretty thin gruel it is. The only thing I know about people, so sure, in fact, that I would put my cock on a block about it, is that people are FULL. OF. SHIT.
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you go out and get a newspaper and scribble “Who is any of us to say?” through every columnist’s column. Then, cut each of the columns out with a pair of scissors and stick them on your living room wall with masking tape. Stand back and admire your handiwork. Then call your girlfriend over. If she doesn’t start making dove-like cooing noises about it, you can be a real principled libertarian and break up with her.
Go all the way. Call up your nearest art gallery and hire some space for a week. Go to your nearest Borders or whatever and buy a dictionary of quotations. Cut each entry out, and slash “Who is any of us to say?” in thick black ink, clip it out, and make a funky montage. The more aphoristic the sentiment in the quotation, the more irate you can get, until you find yourself apoplectic with rage and TRIPLE underlining your many objections. Your new girlfriend, who thinks “libertarianism” has to do with the Dewey system, but who gives good head so you don’t really care, says “cool” as she looks up from the coke spread on the dining room table.
It’s a new day for you. Happy, happy. You can’t remember the last time you cracked open a book, or how nuanced an argument needs to be before the elephant in the room starts to disappear, but the coke is coursing through your veins and your Vietnamese girlfriend never looked so pretty.

Where to start? Foucault has turned history on its ass by employing the genealogical method of analysis. You take the prison system for example and go back. When and how did discipline start? What started it? How was punishment administered? He spends time on classical punishment as any crime was a crime against the sovereign. Not the person who was the victim. Punishment was administered as reenge of the attack on the sovereign’s law.
This is not clear, is it?
Try his analysis of sexuality in his History of Sexuality, starting with very early history. The body as flesh. Homosexuality: Prevalent in Greece as everyone knows, but did you know that the boy was not to receive any pleasure from it. He was just used. For later he would become a citizen, a man and he could not have undergone pleasure from another man when he was young.
What Foucault has done was to go back into the archives. The dusty, yellowed, torn and shredded parchments etc to see what was said at the time. Not what some historian interpreted, or said someone said. Reading manuals for example.
He has worked to kill off interpretation, interpretation of the idnterpretation, a re-interpretation of that and so on into the hazy and faraway future.
Also he has scrubbed out the search for origins. Going back into the past for the causes that led to certain consequences, going back back back until all that’s there are diverging threads to be followed into nothingness.
This dismantles Hegel as the ruling and dominating discourse of philosophy. The thesis-antithesis-new thesis the ever ongoing progress of history into an ever better future. We know now that the future is not going to be better, that we are not progressing.
History is a series of cuts. Discrete events. That is not to say an event may not influence a future event, but then again it may not.Knowledge is not made for understanding. Knowledge is made for cuts. -Foucault And if you think I’m full of it just begin to google search Foucault. See the conferences, the new courses being offered in all the social sciences using his toolbox to dismantle the Dominating Discourse, which is how and what you ccan talk about in any given subject and who can say anything serious at all. Sort of like Kuhn’s The Logic of Scientific Revolutions but much more encompassing.
So it’s useless for us to sit arguing around here. We are just interpreting, then reinterpreting, etc. which is why nothing practical ever gets done on this site. Or in the World.
And if you read my recent links, especially the one about the World of Ants, you will see what I mean.

Foucault on energy which is what you asked.
Energy is knowledge. The relation knowledge/power is crucial to understand what you are asking. Since neither can be viewed alone but only as a relation, a grid that is so interwoven there is no possible separation. So are you still with me?
Knowledge aids power and power enables and reinforces knowledge. The corporations have a lock on energy and also on power. I really don’t think they know how to deal with the energy problem. In Missouri they have legally added ethanol 10% to gasoline. This enriches the big ags. It also makes your fuel injectors sticky. It takes corn out of the food chain. It requires more energy to produce it than it delivers. And it continues to deplete the underground aquifiers. A lose/lose all the way.
Foucault does not address political issues that come up, or he didn’t when alive. What he worked on was local, personal protest concerning wars, the prisons (and how they create more and more criminals)etc. What he wanted was to give us a new way of looking at history. A way unburdened from the past. To see each event separately as it happens and unfolds. Not to see it as a development, a continuity because it is not. It is our belief laid over it that makes us think so.
Our energy is gone and along with it our stupid lifestyles. There is nothing we can do about that. The energy companies are going to harvest and sell energy until they can’t. Like ants in a jar with sugar. They keep happily going on and making babies until they can’t and then they die.

I think the same. As for the goons they hae women and children who want to eat so they will take it.
An additional bit of info is to learn about edible weeds. that way you can share what you know with the goons.

I used to tell the bookstores I would work for them to take their inventory online. They weren’t interested so I bought it 10 cents on the dollar.
The successful bookstores I know, work on the exchange method so they dodn’t put out cash for inventory and they sell at all the online bookstores.
I used to sell a lot but as Bush made things worse more and more people were doing it. The competition is ferocious now. But I just got an entrepreneur email on doing it that sounds like they know something I don’t.

Piggy back on someone else’s 501(c)3. Many of them are umbrellas and will work with you so you can write a grant. See your local library for grant writing workshops that are free. I just took 2 of them.

Gah. That Foucault devoted so much of his writing to sexuality is why I’ve ignored him. I lived in a commune once where a former inmate, who apparently believed that sex was everything but who did not die mid-coitus, which ought to tell you something, had left his collection of books. Every single one of them was about sex.
The owner of the house (Arts and Crafts and beautiful inside and out, by the way) was more that happy to be rid of them, so I helped myself. I took a copy of Sir Richard Burton’s The Perfumed Garden and Jill Tweedie’s In the Name of Love. I admire Burton for the fact that he dressed himself in Arab garb and stole into Mecca, probably the first (or only?) Westerner to do so.
But The Perfumed Garden is agonizingly boring. Does anyone really honestly care what Arabs regard as a good woman or man? Even in the days when Arabs had a culture?
If you haven’t read In the Name of Love you have been spared a crushing and dispiriting experience.

Jung was a supporter of fascism for awhile so that’s probably why.
Andreas Salome wrote that he was nasty and boorish at the last International Psychoanalyical Conference before the war.
She was Freud was wonderful, non-authoritarian.
The most recent expert on authoritarianism is Bob Altemeyer so check out his ebook or order it on LUlu.com called The Authoritarians a fine fined piece of his lifetime research on this topic. Used his research in Conservatives Without Conscience and you can see my reviews of it at daily kos.com under abbeysbooks and the long commented interview with Altemeyer and John Dean that I hosted.

In these times, I can think of one “pearl of Objectivism” worth remembering: “When you hear the word sacrifice, run like hell!”

She stole it from Nietzsche and never gave him credit for it. It’s in his Genealogy of Morals and Ethics (not quite right but close) which Foucault has given Nietzsche full credit for his use of the method of genealogy. When you see this way all the veils of history drop.

I’ve read Disgrace. I’m thinking about the cover of the edition I read, with a sallow dog in the foreground and some rusting pipes or something. Trust me on this, because I’ve lived in South Africa and been on a lot of farms; there’s always rusting this that or the other. Graveyards of mechanization, some of them.Disgrace is harrowing. I hate rape. I really don’t want to know. I know that’s cowardly, but it’s the way I am. I feel sure I would be driven to murder if I ever chanced on a rape in progress.
When I read Disgrace I was housesitting. One night, lightning struck three times on the property. I was sure someone or something wanted me to die. The dogs I was looking after were terrified. The house had a chimney that screeched and cried with every passing wind. I felt desolate and was sure I was going mad. I drank liquor neat until I passed out.Disgrace takes place in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, if I recall. Somewhere around Salem. There’s not a lot to Salem, but there is a Methodist church, actually quite beautiful, whitewashed and austere, that somehow got built even though everywhere round about is just bush.

Honey stop working so hard on your garden. Ruth Stout and Fukuoka both advocate beidng very lazy and laid back about it.
Just start your organic scraps in a pile. You can vits-mix them or put them in a blender to hasten the breakdown. I even saved my shit for years ind put everything in a big composting thing that looked like a huge trash container.
Cut everything down now. See if you can get hay (straw second choice) and separate the square bales into “bricks” and lay them over the ground like bricking up a sidewalk. Go inside and relax.
Get some seeds and put them in seed starters. Old little yogurt things work very well with potting soil.
When it gets warm enough go pick a little hole in the hay and dig a little hole in the dirt and plant your seedling. Pile the hay around it and water it. Go inside and relax.
Visit it at lekast once a day and talk to it and love it. If it doesn’t rain for a long while you can water it. Sometimes I don’t have to water all summer. If you see a weed smash it down with another brick or part of one to smother it. It will be little so it will be easy to do.
Enjoy it. Bring a chair and a book out there and keep it company. Play Vivaldi on a tape recorder and attract the birds.

Blavatsky was Russian and inspired (like Mohammad) and wrote like Keroac did-non stop. Something I remember well was what she said about poverty. That poverty was a condition NOT needing change. That the poor person was poor for a reason, that wealth given to him would ruin his spiritual development. Actually she says it all much better than I just did and has made me think differently about poverty ever since. I have French friends that say that Americans are only nice when they have money. Think about that one for awhile and all the people you know or did know will trickle through your mind.
Anyway Rudolph Steiner was a part of Theosophy with her but split when Annie Besant inherited the mantle from B. She then saw Krishnamurti as the reincarnation of Jesus and I forget who else as somebody else.
The Steiner split and formed Anthroposophy, the Waldorf Schools, Bio-dynamic gardening, and many other things. Once of his disciples started a compost trash collection for LA and the pile melted in three weeks into compost. Truly magical things around Steiner. But he advocates meditations going to the root of things. A seed for example will go into what kind of soil, what will it require, at what time of the year or month or lunar cycle will you plant it, and so on. One of his disciples in India fed organic bio-dynamic food to cows, put them in a pasture next to ordinary fed cows who had hoof and mouth disease (remember the UK slaughtering all their cattle who got this plague not so long ago) and his cows (not even one) got the terribly contagious disease.
Besant and a man meditated on the molecular compound of all the elements and drew their atomic structure before the microscope saw it.
If you are awake to this work you will see it where it’s not labeled. I watched the Nature channel once about ants (I really like ants!). The scientists was studying their behavior with the caterpillars that produce a liquid on their hairs and make the ants drunk. So they take them into their nests. But why? They can get the liquor easily leaving them where they are. He intuited it was some other reason and he found out that they made music when they combed the hairs for liquor so he amplified it and taped it. I immediately knew he was Steiner trained at some point to think like this so carefully.
That’s some of what I know about it.

Go on down a little more and get my gardening wisdom. Your garden will teach you what it wants. Just start easy.
I see people around her cultivating with machines, fertilizing, doing all sorts of work and making a big thing out of it. Why? Don’t they have anything else to do but make something fun into work?
KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid! When you get into it you will find what you need to know.

Jung was not a supporter of fascism. Fascism is a political movement. Jung was far too intelligent for that. Jung thought, in the early days of the rise of Nazism, that it represented a good thing in that, to him, it showed that the defeatism that had followed the Great War of 1914-18 was at an end, and that the Germans, who had unquestionably drawn the short straw at Versailles, had gotten over their national inferiority complex.
There is an occult dimension to Nazism, deliberately suppressed at the Nuremberg trials for political reasons, that was very obvious to Jung in the 1930s. He was quite pleased that the “blond beast” of Germany was willing to do battle with the spirit-sapping, effete modernity that had arisen in the years between the wars.
Jung was boorish; Freud was charming? I’ll give you this statement of Freud’s, written in a letter, that should show you that, if nothing else, Freud was damn good at hiding what he really felt.
“I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings, on the whole. In my experience, most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.”

Well Foucault said in a later interview that asked him why he hadn’t published the rest of the volumes on sexuality that he said he would write, said that now he was bot so interested in sexuality anymore but he was working on them when he died.
But he was going at it genealogically, not writing sex manuals. I have just started vol I and he is writing about a Greek philosopher’s book on dreams. I am assuming he is going to confront freud on this later.
His major theme was confinement and surveillance. He extended Bentham’s Panopticon, a truly horrifying book, which we ignore at our peril. David Foster Wallace was writing his version in his last unfinished novel before he committed suicide.
Surveillance where the watchers are themselves watched and where the watched watch themselves. Foucault has the finest eye ever for fascism in all its dirty little unobserved forms.

Bentham’s panopticon. God, don’t I know it. I just wish the surveillance society I live in could comfortably be called by such a charming Grecian name. Since you are so passionate about Foucault, I feel obliged to read him, which I will soon, and tell you what I’ve found.

Krishnmurti is the real deal.
And Krishnamurti was supposed to inherit the mantle from Besant. She adopted him as a young boy, sent him to Paris to school, as she saw in him the reincarnation of Jesus.
However, he had his own ideas, broke with Theosophy, and just walked around and gave lectures and answered questions. He didn’t even write books but people transcribed everything he said and made his lectures into books.
If you read his lectures on reality you will stop all your spiritual searching, he is so clear. and he smells fascism out in tiny tiny forms that lie in you waiting to get you.
He is a true non violent radical of the mind. Time to read him again if I am suggesting that you all do it.

The easiest entry is Rabinow’s book Foucault:Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. He has covered all his work with excerpts from most of his writings.
Yesterday when that plane went into the IRS offices I thought of DFW and his last writing. It is pure Panopticon taking place in an IRS office where they are processing people’s returns. Hideous. Since Wallace was thoroughly informed about philosophy (his father taught it)I am sure he meant exactly what he wrote about his metaphor.
Have you read The Great One:David Foster Wallace?
I am so sure his last writing depressed him even more, and that he knew it was really coming, that he just didn’t want to be here for it.
Well, Foucault said that humanity will just be a an outline of a face in the sand. Kind of like Keats’s Oszmandius (can’t spell it).

Yes I’ve now read three of his including Disgrace as per your recomendation when I was another man. He’s good and can take you places. I didn’t like “The Slow Man” so much – it had a fantasy element like Herman Hesse used which I never like very much.
And Houellebecq’s “The Elementary Particles” was great. I particularly liked the science fiction ending – because surely there is no ultimate escape from our dilemma until we become different “men” or in this case, “beings”.
He may be a bit of one trick pony – unlike Coetzee. His main character in “Platform” is another sex obsessed utterly alientated character. Does he have any others? If not, they must all be based on himself. Poor Michel, Literature as Therapy. But he’s not the only one stuck there, all Of Europe is. Thus his work has great meaning and he knows there are no easy anwers.
But down a peg from the Existential, he loses me. He knows the Muslims are wreaking havoc on the fabric of European Society, but he calls anyone who wants to do anything about it “thugs”. Same old shit. Utterly irrational and alienated – more proof that he is his characters.
Nadine Gordimer – very bad reputation with White Nationalists. Spent her career writing about what morons Afrikaner Women were and was also an activist for the Blacks. Hope she’s happy now. Most of the Jews left after their work of destruction was finished. She stayed. Got mugged by a Black a few years ago. As Cotton Mather said, “The wheels of justice grind exeedingly slow but exceedingly fine.”
But what the Hell, reading your opponents is a good intellectual and spiritual exercise. So I might just giver her a read sometime. Anyway Abbey, thank you for the recomendations.

Guenon, Frijof Schuon, and Martin Lings all became Muslims so they could become Sufis. They felt this Tradition was still somewhat alive whereas the Western Traditons were dead. I can’t take that route because I’m commited to the West. I love Sufism but can’t accept the Muslim baggage that comes with it. Abbey having read Idries Shah, thinks Sufism has no relation to Islam. She’s very, very wrong. But don’t let that stop you – they’re worth reading. Great Neo-Traditionalists all. Martin Lings is the lesser light of the three, but check out his books on the Esotericism in Shakespeare.
Another one should read: Julius Evola. He knew many of the greats including Guenon. Like many, he had high hopes of Nazism. But they rejected him after a time because he was too aristocratic and valued the individual. He too realized that it was a bad marriage. But of course, his reputation suffered. He was never allowed to attend the great Eranos Conferences because of this. Just found out that he also knew Eliade the great Romainian writer on Yoga and Myth.
Not only a scholar, but a practicing Occultist – read him to get another viw of Masonry, a dim one. “In the specific case of modern Freemasonry the following factors would make it appear a typical example of a pseudo-initiatory organization: it’s confused syncretism; the artificiality of most of its hierarchy’s degrees, (something that even a layman would notice); and the banality of the moralistic, social, rationalistic, and modern exogesis applied to various borrowed elements that have an authentic esoteric character. And yet, considering the “efficient direction” of that organization in reference to the previously mentioned elements and to its revolutionary activity, one cannot help feeling that he is confronting a force that, on the spiritual plane, acts against the spirit itself; a dark force of antitradition and counterinitiation. In that case, it is possible that its rites are more harmful than one may think, and that those who partake of it, without realizing it, establish contact with this force which cannot be grasped by ordinary consciousness.” from the “Mystery of the Grail”, pages 171-172
In contrast, He also states that Guenon approved of Masonry as a real Tradition and bizarrely enough, also approved of the Church – the two are bitter enemies each considering the other demonic.
These men all feel things are getting worse and worse a la the Cosmic Cycle of the four yugas. I used to believe in evolution of Society but I’m with them now – things are going down and fast. The Western Religons are narrow compared with the great Wisdom Traditions of the East, but that narrowness suits us and is necessary for most people. Keeps things practical in other words. Mohammad said the End would be near when the buildings became very tall and people started wearing the clothes of the opposite gender. Now by the End, they don’t mean the physical end of th World but rather the End of our Civilization and a new Begining. A new Manvantara. A new Satya Yuga. And it will all end in a big Boom. Somehow what comes after will be pure and strong. Hard to believe? Yes from our perspective. It has to do with Cosmic Infuences not acknowledged by our Science. Woo Woo Stuff.

Vlad,
I don’t care tuppence about the opinions
of others about you. You’re absolutely
correct. To steal the style of a Winston
Churchill quote: the USA is the most racist
society in the world … except for ALL THE
OTHERS.
The self-loathing of Eurocentric culture is
a death sentence. If one goes to places like
China or Japan, they dislike blacks, “round
eyes”, and even each other. Gimme a freakin’
break.
Our culture has gone to absurd lengths to
indulge other cultures (ballots in NINE
languages???) while those cultures, in
their home lands, indulge virtually NOBODY.
So hammer away at Vlad, you fact-ignoring
PC types. Why don’t you hyper-PC types
move to Europe where you can be convicted
of a hate crime for criticizing a Muslim
while they’re immune from prosecution for
a similar screed against their host cultures?
Get the fuck outta here … please.
Eleuthero

People in this country were mostly independent and mostly self-sufficient farmers in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Food production employed people with work that connected them to the land and their food. People were healthy because of the physical labor and the diet of non chemical tainted food.
Essentially a strong self-sufficient breed of men and women who did not depend on others as much as we do today. They could do a little of everything.
Build things, fix things, grow things.
Today we have the specialists who have given up the self-sufficient life for doing one thing.The farm was once a way of life, and not just a unit of production. I think alot of people are bored and unhappy as a result. They have traded in their time to become a unit of production.
They make 10 times more money than their ancestors but feel no purpose in their labor. The Agri-Elite less than 5% of the propulation produce our food source today. The average man is subject to employment of others doing worthless tasks to purchase this food. There is more power being used with the food production than we realize.
We can ultimately survive without petroleum, but we cannot live without food.
Wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in their home, they first disciplined themselves…
-Confucius-

Now by the End, they don’t mean the physical end of th World but rather the End of our Civilization and a new Begining. A new Manvantara. A new Satya Yuga. And it will all end in a big Boom. Somehow what comes after will be pure and strong. Hard to believe? Yes from our perspective. It has to do with Cosmic Infuences not acknowledged by our Science. Woo Woo Stuff.

Kali Yuga and Satya Yuga are not Woo Woo. Woo Woo is New Age nonsense.
Kali Yuga and Satya Yuga are truths older than Christianity and older than our Science.

Great post. I know exactly what you mean. My parents were barely educated peasant farmers in Europe. But they are far more capable and adaptable than I am with my fancy university degree. You could drop them naked in a forest in the middle of nowhere and they would survive and in six months they’d have a farm up and running. Me, I’d be dead in a week.
And you’re right people are bored and unhappy. Living in an effing cube 12 hours a day as so many do is like living in a grey walled soul destroying prison.

I just took a PV class…that questions like asking ‘ how much does a car cost’?
look to rebates from govt to defray costs. ask a local company that does installations. you can save by possibly leasing and installing yrself.
id say anywhere from 10k to 50k or more. biggest concern is how much power you use.
also do an energy audit on yr home. much energy may be wasted in yr home.

what REALLY gets to me is how the world collectively has shrugged off the murder of 70M chinese by mao etc. mainland china gets UN seat, taiwan gets the boot.
only a fool id say theres no agenda at work.

Houellebecq cannot live in France because of his writing against Muslims (“Islam is the stupidest of religions”)and his publishers were afraid to have an opening for his 2001 book, but he was saved by 9-11.
Yes it is much more dangerous to criticize Moslems there than here.
The Jews in the concentration camps used to call another Jew a Moslem when they turned yellowish before dying. Moslem meant that person was a dead person.

Those deaths happened before the internet so yes they did get away with it.
Think Foucault. Look at that event as a cut. Then consider Darfur and Somalia. They don’t have the huge population of China but how about taking percentages of death compared to the total population. ??????
China is not going to be able to put the genie of capitalism back in the bottle.
Study Foucault.

Thanks for the support. You put it well – the Political Scientist James Burnham said, “Liberalism is the Death Song of the West”. The old joke that a Liberal can’t take his own side in argument isn’t so funny anymore. It’s deadly accurate – and that’s only where it begins. At the next stage, the patient can’t even understand arguments in his own favor or threats against his well being. Then the Libtard begins to feel that he doesn’t even deserve to have a point of view at all – or exist as part of a Nation. The Liberal is self righteous even at the first stage. By the second he is violently enraged at normal people. By the third stage he is willing to actively collude with aliens against his own people.
The utter self destructive masochism of it all hides the egotism. The sufferer is really trying to save his soul and to do it he feels it’s his duty to destroy his own people because they’re evil. Thus he becomes good to the extent he destroys his own. But ask him to sacrafice his job, his personal saftey, his children’s education and he see another side of it: the crafty, corrupt self deluding side. He still loves himself and his own – everyone else can go die. There are rare exceptions: Howard Stern’s mother stayed in their neighborhood after all the other Jews had fled from the incoming Blacks. She said to Howard that they had to show the Blacks that their idealism was real. Howard got beat up every day by the greatful Blacks. She was sincere unlike the average corrupt liberal, but an utter fool. She went the last step, to actually sacrafice her own Children to this Idolatry.
So as many have said, it’s a religion; a bastard combination of degraded Christianity and Marxism and Maoism. For my part, I can understand the pleasures of Decadence: harems, intoxication, and lolling on cushions, but THIS? Even the Romans in their decadence still loved themselves. And still got off the cushions and won battles even late into their history. I doubt if any Civilization has ever died so quickly and so strangely. One great White Nationalist scholar (classics I believe) named Revilo Oliver (his name is a palindrome) said that some of the Greeks became this way after Greece was conquered by Alexander. I don’t know, but at least they didn’t completely collapse the way we did.

So hammer away at Vlad, you fact-ignoring
PC types. Why don’t you hyper-PC types
move to Europe where you can be convicted
of a hate crime for criticizing a Muslim
while they’re immune from prosecution for
a similar screed against their host cultures?
Get the fuck outta here … please.
Eleuthero
Well, well, now we know just who is waiting for Vlad to Impale…..
How long have you been holding your ankles? You will probably have a long wait, Vlad will have to test your rectal purity prior to the actual impaling.
Hope you enjoy it….
Oh, don’t forget to use plenty of lube
😉

“Kali Yuga and Satya Yuga are truths older than Christianity and older than our Science.”
===========================
I’ll confess right up front that I wouldn’t know either of these Yuga chicks from third base … wouldn’t know ’em if I tripped over them. But can it only be me who wonders about the truth of the above statement? and why in hell we should accept its truth because Asoka says so? Why are people like Asoka, or Vlad (who I normally credit with more sense) or Rob and Paulette for that matter, so enamored with the thoughts and practices of ancient people from distant lands? Perhaps it’s the placebo effect of the exotic. The age of their ideas has no bearing on the truth of “our Science.”

Yeah that’s what I just said, oh Annoying One. The “woo woo stuff” was a little joke for Martin.
Thank you for showing your True Colors in your last post. I know that you don’t really believe in non-violence when it comes to Whites any more than King did. Yeah, you guys might be part of our Karmuppance, but reign forever? That’s a joke, you people can’t even keep your own neighborhoods clean. No sir, as soon as the West dies, all the aid and programs stop. Then the four horsemen will have their way with the Black Man both here and in Africa. With us too, to be sure – but we will begin to rise again and you will not.
And maybe even before that. Your value to the Elite may be over you know. They have the Mexicans now – a much harder working people, also good fighters to keep Whites down. One of these days the Blacks may riot and not be treated with kid gloves as they have for fifty years.

I’ll confess right up front that I wouldn’t know either of these Yuga chicks from third base … Why are people like Asoka … so enamored with the thoughts and practices of ancient people from distant lands?

First you admit you don’t know the Yugas.
Then you question what age has to do with it…
The truth of my statement is obvious:

“Kali Yuga and Satya Yuga are truths older than Christianity and older than our Science.

And if you read carefully, I am not making any claims about the truth of our Science. I am simply stating that the Yugas are older (by several millenia), which is a fact.
I am actually beginning to feel embarrassed for St. Josephs.

yr comments are so wonderful. Did ashok and TT drive you away?
‘ the placebo effect of the exotic. The age of their ideas has no bearing …’
Its like believing in astrology because at least one Us president did and its been around for 1000s of years and peeps all over the globe do.
THE FACT THAT DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE GLOBE DEVELOPED CONTRADICTORY ASTROLOGICAL SYSTEMS goes ignored by the believers!

‘One of these days the Blacks may riot and not be treated with kid gloves as they have for fifty years.’
certainly not in chicago by daley!!!!!
I just finished tom sowells ‘ economic facts’ book. it was OK. i really liked the chapter on education. that ones excellent.he pointed out how daley handled black riots [ shoot ta kill]
also riots in LA for 20? years have been multi cultural!!! just had one last year. its an excuse for disenfranchised minorities to loot. it has zip to do with political discontent.

A new Dark Age? Hell, why not?
“A new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment of language, new kinds of poverty, merciless remodeling of opinion by media, immiseration of the mind, obsolescence of the soul. Massified, standardizing modes, in every area of life, relentlessly re-enact the actual control program of modernity. Capitalism did not create our world; the machine did.”
— Jean-François Lyotard

WM:
in 1900 most did not work the farm. maybe 30%.
‘ The Agri-Elite less than 5% of the propulation produce our food source today.’
I have read 3%. and their purchase world wide of large swats of land to destroy, i mean farm is alarming.
Business week just did a piece on how agribiz is rolling into tribal africa.

Back when this thread started out it was about economic collapse and peak oil.
The race hate crowd have been allowed to take it over and it’s now full of thinly veiled referrences to racial violence. It comes served with the usual race hate crap – anyone that objects is a liberal, PC, weak or stupid.
We even got the poor, poor whites crap. When I was young, it was only the left that snivelled and cried for itself like this. Now the right seems to have caught the ailment. Do you really believe blacks have more power?
Look, every racist I ever met turned out to be full of self-pity. They can’t get ahead ‘cos the jobs have been taken by blacks, Pakistanis, etc. Bullshit. You ain’t getting ahead ‘cos you are fat, dumb and lazy. Get off your ass, get some exercise, get some skills, get some new clothes and get out their knocking on doors. I’m 100 per cent WASP, and let me tell you, it never held me back. (Actually, a surprising amount of racists I’ve met turned out to have, as they say in England, a touch of the tar brush themselves.)
Yes, I know there are ghettos and gangs – and a lot of white trash, too. It doesn’t bother me, because I’m not there. It’s somebody else’s problem. I work hard so that I live in a better neighbourhood.
Come to think of it, didn’t Kunstler say the Nascar states are going to burn when peak oil comes down and the whole thing goes tits up? I guess that’s where all this is coming from. . .
There are white power boards out there. Use them.

There are a LOT of great jokes about liberals.
“A liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been
mugged yet”. Liberals are people who are in
favor of busing YOUR kids to ghetto public
schools but who have never had one “person
of color” over to dinner at their house.
They wax utopian about the great melting pot
of humanity but not one of them would ever
think of driving to a ghetto for a nice, romantic
late night walk.
Ironically, I am not extremely far to the right,
politically. I find much hypocrisy on both sides
of the aisle in US politics but the SOCIAL
hypocrisy of liberals is just high farce to me.
They sermonize and soliloquize about “people of
color” but in the vast majority of cases with
which I’m personally acquainted, these people
only admire their “rainbow coalition” from a
distance. In their actual social behavior,
they’re as racist as a KKK member. Their
egalitarianism is just a SOCIAL POSE. It’s
even worse if they’re the types that say “…
all my good friends are …” … these are the
kind who have “pet” black friends, for example.
Tokenism for social self aggrandizement.
On the other hand, the “right” in the USA now,
far from being the fiscal conservatives of old,
are in favor of the USA as an EMPIRE (e.g.,
the “neo-conservatives”) which is bankrupting
us. Most countries, even China, spend about
5 percent of GDP on defense. In the USA it’s
around 44%. Our founders exhorted AVOIDANCE
of foreign complications. Our neo-cons SEEK
complications and the more bellicose, the
better.
There is no “left” and “right” in the USA.
The former are usually adolescent utopians
while the latter are military-industrial
lovers of Cheney-esque character. True
Constitutional Conservatism is all but dead.
Indeed, the Republicans on the Supreme Court
who claimed that a corporation is an individual
would be shot by Madison or Jefferson.
Eleuthero

Wow, dude, you’re REALLY full of shit.
Your argument form is basically “well,
there are lots of white trash who hate
people of color, therefore, all people
who rail against other ethnicities must
be white trash”. Take a fucking symbolic
logic course, ninnie.
Read my latest post about “liberals” who
pull the “race hate” card whenever anyone
who’s white backs their own race to the
same racist extent that blacks back their
race, hispanics back their race, and Asians
disdain the “round eyes”. Realpolitik is
NOT your strong suit. Reality is that
everyone is a racist so the only argument
left is who is right WHEN CONFRONTED WITH
MASSES OF DATA?
If you remove blacks and hispanics from
the USA, the reality is that you’d have
the crime rate of SWEDEN … that well
known bastion of rape, pillage, and murder.
Ahem…
As soon as you send your kids to a ghetto
school and routinely do your jogs in a
ghetto, then you can claim to be a true
egalitarian … and an even bigger moron
than you already are. Because even your
rainbow coalition brethren know better
than to let their “love” of people of
color make their ACTUAL behavior truly
egalitarian.
As far as those other people who are “kicking
our asses”, a lot of them are from places like
CHINA where the citizens laugh at people like
you who believe things in the absence of
evidence. You think the USA is racist??
What do you think Asians think of blacks or
what Europeans think of Muslims, on average?
The USA is the LEAST racist major culture in
the world … and NOT to our betterment, on
the whole.
Do you think the WHITE FLIGHT OF 1965 to the
suburbs was just a bunch of gomers who had
no experiential data to back their flight
out of neighborhoods being invaded by blacks??
If you do, you’re a far bigger “hater” than
the people you dun with that same label.
Ta-ta…
Eleuthero

QSHTIK, Well in this case the fabric is cracking!!! Like the infrastructure that surrounds us, it has been left to degrade and weather without needed maintenance. Yep, the once flexible and vibrant fabric of our society has gone brittle on us.
There’s way too much debt and not enough oil to keep going much longer. Debt servicing means shifting funds away from productive enterprises like finding a “fix” to help mitigate the worst effects of peak oil and start the long and difficult process of re-structuring from a greedy, materialistic oil-based global society to a holistic, local, community-based post-carbon society. Well, since the will and funds are not there, I guess we’ll just go over the cliff!!! I hear that fabric of society beginning to crackle and pop!
Wow, now the oil company BP has a big honking hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Just what we need, millions of barrels of finite oil bombing the environment and no relief in sight!!! The Eurozone is under siege. Last ditch bailouts are not working. A big hurricane season is coming. Crack baby crack.

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Too Much Magic

Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation

The nationally best-selling author of "The Long Emergency" expands on his alarming argument that our oil-addicted, technology-dependent society is on the brink of collapse—that the long emergency has already begun. Published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.